Battlestar Galactica: The Lions of Leonis
by Phoenix4416
Summary: Spinoff from Battlestar Galactica:New Beginnings covering the war on Leonis. Without a fleet to protect them, with a world torn apart by a nuclear bombardment and with their people forced to survive in vast underground bunkers, this story covers a deadly, harrowing war from the perspectives of its leaders and its soldiers and civilians. A war of Stalingrad proportions.
1. Chapter 1

**Battlestar Galactica: Lions of Leonis**

"We will come for you once the bombs have fallen...

It may seem that all hope is lost and that the end has finally come, but…we will endure…"

-**Field Marshall Montgomery during the height of the bombardment of Leonis.**

**Chapter One: From the Ashes**

There was a tumultuous silence throughout ARC-16 (Command) as the Cylons continued their nuclear bombardment of Leonis. Whether in numerous halls and open spaces or command levels and cargo areas, those within this vast underground bunker felt the weight of the war, a war they did not want nor star, press down upon them with every vibration of a nuclear impact which permeated the planet. But they would stay strong, even as all around them their world came crashing down. And why would they stay strong? Because to do otherwise would mean not just defeat but death and would be a stark insult to the many deeds of those fleet officers who had died in order to buy them time.

Armed Recovery Complex 16 or ARC-16 was one of 82 such facilities spread across Leonis. These facilities were either built from disused mines or constructed in secret (secrets that people had been killed to protect) in areas known to have stable caving systems or with substantially stable bedrock. It would be wrong to think of the ARCs as bunkers, after all when you think of bunkers you think of underground complexes capable of protecting up to a few thousand and for only as long as the supplies held out. ARCs on the other hand were something different, each one different to the next they were capable of housing between ten thousand and three hundred thousand people for long periods of time thanks to immense stores of food (5 years worth) and the ability to hydroponically grow vast genetically modified crops in both areas set aside for agriculture and along the sides of numerous corridors. However these crops were primarily to extend the lifespan of each ARC. In addition to the foodstores, each ARC had large quantities of raw materials and small to mid-scale manufacturing facilities for a number of technologies from weapons and ammunition to ceramics and microchips, the amounts varied ARC to ARC.

Depending on both location, terrain and ARC size spread out over a couple of miles were combined garages and hangers accessible through parking structures (entrances hidden by false walls or floors), tunnels (Train and road) or entrances covered by grass or road. Each garage hanger was located a bare minimum of 100 feet below ground and not directly above the main body of each ARC in case of discovery by the Cylons. Each had a vast amount of vehicles to support the military. (In the event of discovery tunnels leading to the main body of each ARC are lined with explosives).

Power supplies were primarily fusion based with the reactors being a bare minimum of 1.2km below ground with a tylium back-up. Water purification was developed from Osmosis technology developed for the Battlestar fleet as was the air purification systems. Sewage and refuse went to be broken down into its base chemicals before being added to the hydroponic agriculture as needed, everything that it was possible to recycle would be recycled in order to best hide their presence. A handful of ARCs were in prime locations for mining minerals which meant that as long as the structural integrity of the ARCs were not put into question then mining would be allowed.

In addition there were hospitals, labs, barracks, firing ranges, workshops, gyms, recreation areas and then the habitation areas. These areas again took their cue from the Battlestar fleet in order to maximise on space, so you have up to 10 people bunking in 7x5 metre dorms, with 5 dorms to a bathroom and 20 dorms to a mess. Contingency plans state that if possible then military would be bunking with civilians in case of the need for evacuation (Survival rates of civilians in such circumstances should be a lot higher).

ARC-16, although it was seen as the Command ARC was a midsized ARC at 120,000 capacity. However it had a larger number of Garages and Hangers at 10 due to its location beneath the industrial sector (designers realised that they could better hide any entrances in warehouses). It was never designated as ARC-01 due to the fact that intelligence analysts believed that it was possible the Cylons would focus on destroying ARC-01 first due to its designation and the belief that it would be appropriated by a command authority. ARC-01 was uninhabited and was designed to remain that way just in case.

Deep in the heart of ARC-16, the CIC was abuzz with activity as reports were passed between officers as the base came to life amongst all the carnage that had befell Leonis. These officers were newly arrived and the vast majority were unaccustomed to the base due to its construction being a tightly guarded secret, but still the systems were designed to be similar to those available on the earliest class of battlestars. They weren't the best systems or the most powerful but they were the most durable systems that weren't the easiest to hack.

In the centre of the vast chamber, stood by the side of a large map table watching a bank of monitors as they relayed topside views of a devastated Leonis was the most powerful man on Leonis, Field Marshall Montgomery (equivalent to a five star general). The images on the various screens were breaking up and dropping out as the digital relays were being taken down by the overwhelming amounts of radiation and destruction caused by numerous thermonuclear and neutron missiles detonating in Leonis atmosphere, but enough was being made clear and that was that nothing would ever be the same again. The shining and majestic city of Luminaire which shone with life from the Crimson Palace to the Stonewall Plaza were being reduced to irradiated, and in some cases shattered mausoleums. Montgomery was so sickened that he eventually became glad for the dropouts in coverage. Soon it would be over and the Cylons would move onto Virgon, and then the war could begin in kind.

**47 minutes later**

"General, dradis sweeps are still showing approximately fifty Basestars surrounding the Kraken" (Cylon Colony) a colonel told the Admiral as he read the information coming through.

Taking a look at the position of the Cylon fleet that remained behind, Montgomery asked "How bad are the radiation levels?"

It was a moment before a major replied "350 rems, sir".

Knowing that this was still too high even with anti-rad meds, Montgomery realised that the levels were manageable enough if you wore a radiation suit and topped up with the meds. They had to start moving now. "Colonel, get the demolition teams suited up and ready to move out in ten minutes. Demolition plan X-ray and see if you can regain contact with the other ARCs. Major Trent, I need the 21st, the 14th, the 19th and the 40th ready to start search and rescue operations in half an hour, for now though, get a few Raptors flying as close to the ground as possible, they need to start mapping the city and notify the SAR teams of any and all standing structures".

"Yes, sir".

Going over to join a middle aged General, stood by the side of the communications consoles, Montgomery nodded saying "Hell of a mess we've gotten ourselves in Harry" as ever the Leonosion habit of understatement getting the better of him. Before the other could say anything, with hands behind his back, Montgomery asked "How would you feel about sending your men off planet?"

General Harry Fermash looked down at the man, a grin creasing one side of his face as he asked "Off-planet. What have you got in mind, Monty?"

Lowering his voice, Montgomery said "I was thinking…the very last thing the Cylons will expect is for us to start planting Commandos on the other Colonies, at least not right now…"

**21****st**** Legion (Panther Legion)**

**Major Natalie Ford**

Due to a change in the winds it was another 20 minutes before it was deemed safe enough for the search and rescue teams to be sent out clad in a lighter version of a radiation suit similar in size to the flightsuits worn by Viper and Raptor pilots. But still when the doors to the ARC were finally thrown open, a blast of superheated air still caught Major Ford off guard as it struck her like a punch. Behind her were more than a thousand Legionaries, each one waiting to finally get out and do their jobs. Taking a booted step forward, Natalie was struck by the turbulent clouds suspended in the sky and seeming to forever block any view of the outside universe. Shaking her head, her hands resuming a more sturdy grip of her assault rifle, Natalie looked ahead and started walking through the ruins of the warehouse, all the while her boots crunching on millions of shards of glass that had been blown from the overhead windows, now just overhead spaces. Here and there parts of the warehouse walls had cracked and fallen leaving gaping holes in the cavernous room, but still looking around it was hard to imagine that this room could have survived the nuclear bombardment relatively intact.

It was another minute before she finally reached the entrance to the warehouse. Levelling her rifle at it, the Major ordered "Pauli, Sam get the door open". A third legionary (the last member of Nats squad Jammer) moved to stand near her and like her, levelled his rifle at the door, ready just in case there were Cylons on the other side of it. Putting their full weight into it, Pauli and Sam got a tight grip on two handles welded onto the door and started slowly moving it to the side, all the while a harsh screech coming from the half-melted wheels on it as they scraped along the runners.

Before Natalie, the world opened up to her and where the view towards the city of Luminaire should have been blocked by the industrial and manufacturing district they were now in, so much damage had befallen the area that she was able to see almost clear through the area and to the towering skyscrapers that rested in the heart of Luminaire. It was hard to make out from this distance but you could just barely see gaping holes in some of the skyscrapers and on some it was obvious that half of the floors had been destroyed, most likely fallen onto the nearby areas. What really surprised Natalie though, was the fact that the skyscrapers remained standing even though it was obvious that half of them were missing.

A heavy hand slapped down on her left shoulder, the weight behind it almost hammering Nat into the ground and a voice barked out "Look ahead Major. That's why we're going to fight. That is why we're going to kick those Toasters right back to the scrapyard they came from. Frak the eleven, the only colony that can win this war is this one. Move out!"

Glad to be free of Colonel Blighs presence, Natalie exited the warehouse with her squad joining her. Looking behind them when they were a safe distance away, Jammer said "Who the frak does he think he is. `Frak the eleven`. Guy should go and deep throat a shotgun".

Shaking her head, Natalie replied "He's a tosser but he's supposed to be good in command".

An T-34 Tank sporting what looked like a snowplough on its front drove past them as it slowed down to a halt, behind it a motorcade of what looked like the Leonosion equivalent of Humvees and open topped trucks joining it. Jumping into the first Humvee, Natalie heard Jammer say to her "Just keep Bligh away from me" the look on his face reinforcing the words and the tattoo on his neck seeming to pulse in reaction. A moment later the convoy pulled away.

**Queen Alexandria**

Looking at this woman as she worked away at patching up the wounded that were filling the halls of this hospital bunker, it would be hard to believe that she was the Queen of the ruling house of Leonis. True she didn't have much power, her ancestors had willingly gave most of it back to the people with the formation of the senate but the monarchy still signed away laws and stood with the people in all their triumphs and tribulations. Not yet 38, the Queen still held a great deal of the beauty that had brought suitors running two decades previously. Her skin seemed as smooth as velvet with barely a hint of a blemish, her eyes a bright blue seeming to have a light of their own and her lips a satisfyingly succulent red and her nose seemed to possess an almost perfect curvature. Alexandria swept a loose lock of curled brown hair behind her right ear before she turned and rushed towards the door just managing to catch a collapsing soldier under his shoulders. As the queens guard came to rushed to her side, Alexandria got a good luck at the soldier she was clutching. Covered in a thick layer of dust and crumbled concrete, his face stood out to her eyes as his head rolled to his left and a vast patch of bloody red, blotchy radiation burned skin covered the entire right side, clumps of hair marring that side of his head, the rest a radiation scarred waste.

How he was still alive, Alexandria didn't know but what she did know was that she would do everything in her power to help this young soldier who had risked his own life to defend Leonis during the bombardment.

Through clenched teeth the Queen said "Quick, help me get him to a bed. Thomas, get Doctor Swan". Whilst one bodyguard went off to find the Doctor, the other quickly moved to the other side of the soldier and slipping his right arm under his shoulder, took as much of the weight as possible, leading the man to a nearby bed. Laying the man down, Alexandria then squirted an anti-bacterial agent onto her hands, rubbing it and then pulling a white plastic gown from a nearby wall mounted holder and slipping it over her head before she moved back to assess the injuries of the unknown soldier.

As she hovered over the man, the Queen called "Marcus, I need some better light", then she gently lifted the soldiers left eyelid, noticing by the way the pupil was positioned that he was slipping into unconsciousness. Looking at the burnt side of the face, Alexandria didn't dare risk trying to open the other eyelid and it was only in this position that she actually realised that his right ear was a bloody carcass of itself. The space around the bed lit up as Marcus positioned a free-standing lamp next to the bed, manoeuvring the head so that it pointed toward the centre of the soldiers body. A medical student that had been tending a patient at a nearby bed moved towards the Queen so as to help her rubbing a cleaning gel into his hands as he did so.

Pulling a pair of scissors from a nearby table, Alexandria started cutting along the centre of the soldiers uniform and from there across to the right arm of the shirt although most of the shirts arm was missing already this didn't stop Alexandria being especially careful not to hurt the tender skin beneath. Without even looking at the medical student, Alexandria ordered "I need adrenaline and 80cc of UB-8 (a type of anti-radiation medication) and get me some Senatrisol cream (another form of anti-radiation treatment)". As the student got to work getting the required drugs, Alexandria looking at the soldiers tags called out "Corporal McGuire, I need you to stay awake. Do you hear me Corporal, stay awake". Getting no response from the soldier, Alexandria-even though she hated herself for it-slapped the soldier across the left side of his face shouting at him "Corporal, stay awake, its your best chance at survival". This time there was a response as his left eyelid fluttered open when she struck him and even though it didn't seem like he could focus on anything, his eye moved to cover Alexandrias general direction.

The medical student returned with the medication and taking a syringe from him and the ampule of adrenaline, Alexandria withdrew the required amount before cleaning a spot on McGuires chest with an alcohol wipe, positioning the needle in the required spot and after pulling back slamming the needle past his ribcage and into his heart, injecting the necessary drug before withdrawing the spent needle and handing it to Marcus. Turning, Marcus deposited the needle in a nearby toxic yellow tub.

With the rapid flow of adrenaline into McGuires body, stronger signs of alertness were shown as his left eye became more focused and he took in a big gasp of air revealing a dry, broken rattle as he did so. Taking the anti-rad meds, the Queen told Marcus to get a bottle of water for the soldier before she wiped down his left arm near the elbow with another wipe and injected the anti-rad meds into a vein. The dose she gave McGuire was twice the that you were meant to give at any one time, but looking down upon the extensive radiation burns, Alexandria knew that the only chance he had-which wasn't much of a chance at all-was with a strong dose of meds. Looking down at McGuires face and seeing his eye focused intently on her, his left hand reached down and into his pants pocket , while his right gently took hold of hers. Allowing her strength to flow from her hand to his Alexandria informed him "Ive given you a dose of adrenaline to keep you awake and accelerate your heart rate so that the anti-radiation med have a better chance at spreading throughout your body", tears welling in her eyes as she spoke to this 20 year old soldier. Marcus carefully poured a small amount of water into McGuires open mouth while Alexandria forced out in as strong a voice as her body would allow her "Im going to do everything I can to help you".

A sharp cough tore through McGuires burnt throat, forcing his body into an upright position before he collapsed back down. His lips struggled to move and his words were lost in the air forcing Alexandria to move her head closer to his. Finally she made out "Send medics to Centuria building, 43rd floor…had to get help, my Lady". His hand came out of his pocket and rested an envelope on his chest saying "For my wife".

Looking up at Marcus, who like her had his head close to Mcguires, Alexandria asked "Did you get that?"

Nodding, and taking a look at the patch on the torn shirt sleeve, Marcus said "I'll get the guard to inform command".

Giving McGuires hand a tighter grasp of assurance, Alexandria said to him, "We will see that they're taken care of" before she let go and took the anti-radiation cream from the medical student, all the while wondering where Doctor Swan was and just when she should expect a flood of wounded to come bursting through the doors.

**Major Natalie Ford**

It seemed like the journey out of the Industrial district and into the heart of Luminaire was taking forever, something made much worse by the horrors that the young, dark haired Major was having to endure as the convoy pushed its way through endless trails of rubble and past countless dead bodies strewn among the wreckage of this once glorious city. But the reality was that despite the amount of debris they were forced to fight their way through when they couldn't go around, that the journey was proceeding much faster than would have seemed possible, this mainly because of previously established contingency plans being in effect, the architects of those plans planning for the very worst eventualities.

From the air, as close to the ground as it was safe to be, Raptors and Ravens mapped the city below them and with every pass they made, these maps were being turned into 3D maps at groundside mobile intelligence stations before being sent back to headquarters using groundbased communication lines. But it didn't stop there. Riding ahead of the convoy, advanced scouts were verifying safe routes through the city for the convoy following behind them. At the head of the convoy and spaced at intervals throughout it was the real beast of burden though, the APCs. Fitted with what looked like a cross between a snowplough and a cattle grill off a steam train and sporting two powerful engines, these APCs weren't designed to be racecars (although they could easily do 88mph), they were instead designed to clear the way with brute strength. Coming to a main road crowded with abandoned cars, the APCs drove on right down the centre. The ploughs backed up with the two immense engines forced aside any and all cars that happened to be in the way of the convoy clearing a route through the middle. As long as the advanced scouts did their jobs then the convoy wouldn't get blocked by fallen buildings.

At certain points, the rear sections of the convoy would break off and head down a different route, the trucks and Humvees being led by and APC so that as much of the city could be covered as possible. This wasn't just a search and rescue mission, the various Legions had to prepare the battlefield and know the areas they would be fighting in.

Craning her head to look out the window at the sky ahead of them, Major Natalie Ford saw a Raven start lowering a fireteam with full loadouts onto the roof of an untouched apartment complex, their jobs Natalie knew were likely to prepare point defences on and in this building. Already Montgomery and the other Generals at the top of the chain of command were carving up Luminaire and the rest of Leonis towns and cities into zones ready for the fight to come. True, the fireteams landing on the roofs would also check the apartment for civilians, but those defences were the word of the day.

It was only another ten minutes before the Convoy pulled over and into a side street, allowing Major Ford and her squad to disembark.

Boots crunching on gravel as she stepped forth, Natalie saw the ten other fireteams in her half century (80 in a full century plus support staff)disembark from their own vehicles, the drivers stepping out to join them and check the status of their vehicles. While the half-century were going to be heading into the surrounding area, the drivers out of need of protecting the convoy and partly out of the fact of them being auxiliaries (if British think of the TA and if American think of the National Guard for Earth equivalent). Coming down the line from the APC, Colonel Bligh started handing out printed orders fresh from Command and newly created aerial maps of the area to each squads commanding officer. Taking hers, Natalie made note of them and the buildings and streets being assigned to her squad and the areas assigned to the other fireteams if support was needed before handing them onto Pauli.

Hefting her Backpack on and clipping her assault rifle onto a safety sling sewn onto the front of her uniform, Natalie went to the rear of the Humvee and opening it up extracted two holdalls passing one onto Jammer and the other to Sam before extracting two sets of collapsible stretchers and after double checking her radiation disk and doing a wireless check, said "We top up on meds in half an hour. I'll take point".

Nodding to a friend in another squad as they set out, Natalie noted that the half century were starting to disperse into this wrecked city on their search for survivors. In her heart she secretly prayed that they would find some welcome news.

**Operation X-Ray Target Codename AP-3**

**14****th**** Legion, 1****st**** Cohort, R.E.D auxiliary corps (Royal Engineers and demolitions)**

With rebreathers strapped tight to their faces, the Demolitions teams forced their way through kilometre upon kilometre of fermenting faeces in pursuit of their objective. Every once in a while one of the EDs would double over, ripping away the mask from their faces and throw up their guts into the sewer as the unbelievable stench of the sewers overwhelmed the rebreathers filters. This was made even worse by the oppressive heat that seemed to push in on the soldiers who were already roasting from the radiation uniforms they were being forced to wear. All told there were 20 Engineers in this section carrying eight highly suspect and exceedingly heavy packages in addition to their own expanded kit.

Shining his torch on a nearby sign attached to the curved sewer wall and with two lamps next to it instead of the usual one, the lead Engineer was glad that they had finally gotten to their first objective. Using hand signals so as to save having to risk breathing in the rancid air speaking, the commanding officer motioned for the first device to be set in place. At his command, an engineer moved forward and after pulling out a couple of bricks of C8 and installing the firing pins, attached them to the wall before moving to join the rest of the Engineers whom had moved out of the line of danger. While there was a danger of the planned explosion being worse due to the normally rich methane environment they were in, due to the attack likely setting alight much of the methane in the sewers there was currently an average 70 percent drop in methane levels.

At a safe enough distance the Engineer activated the detonator causing a deep explosion to thrust a sonic boom their way through air and faeces before the echoing explosion caught up with it. Once the explosion had died down and the dust started to clear two Engineers carrying a heavy package in a large metal crate between them moved to a previously hidden bulkhead. Due to the way the explosives had been set and with this section of tunnel being reinforced the vast majority of the damage was confined to the false wall. Upon pulling the locking leavers and pushing it open, stepped into a 10 metre diameter circular hemispherical chamber.

The commanding officer and the rest of the Engineers moved onto the next objective leaving those two to set up their parking warden.

Twenty metres above their heads lay nothing except for a patch of hardened Tarmac like a vast carpark.

**Sacred Paeon Hospital Bunker**

**Queen Alexandria**

Alexandria had spent the last 30 minutes going between treating the radiation burnt soldier and the 20 odd patients that she had before things really got bad. Her bodyguard had returned to her during that time to inform her that Doctor Swan was currently suffering a mental breakdown after finding out his wife and two daughters had been killed in the bombardment. Shaking her head as she too suffered, her eldest son, had served as a commander of the Battlestar Ulysses which had already been reported as lost in action with barely a handful of survivors making it off ship. She knew that he would never willingly abandon ship when there were still people on board. Then there was her youngest son who was only 16, but she knew that he was safe in the Palace bunker. One child however had made it into the Colonial Fleet, her daughter, the second in line to the throne, Princess Sarah. Her heart ached at the likelihood that she would never see her daughter again, never help her choose a wedding dress and be there at her wedding.

Tears started to sting the Queens eyes, and Marcus after serving her for 20 years knew her better than anyone. Using as much decorum as was possible, Marcus placed a hand on her shoulder giving it a light squeeze and causing the Queen to cover it with her own. The doors to the underground ward burst open admitting a flood of wounded civilians and soldiers brought in by a mere handful of Legionaries.

Forgetting her own comfort, Alexandria called out to the few interns that were in the ward to come and help her perform triage and go gather what Doctors and Surgeons they could before she moved forward and armed with a pen checked each patients injuries and sent them to where they needed to be, but the stream of wounded seemed never ending.

At the side of the ward, Marcus spoke to a Legionary who told him that the hospital would be evacuated once the medical facilities had been in the ARCs had been powered up and a safe route had been established for the convoys in 30 minutes time. The soldier then continued "We followed up your lead on the Centuria building, by the time we got there, two had died of radiation poisoning and the other is paralysed. How's your guy doing?"

Keeping his voice low, Marcus answered "He's received too much radiation…I don't think he'll make it even though there is a tiny chance".

Shaking his head, the Legionary muttered "The guy is lucky to have survived this long, most of those who stayed manning the defences didn't make it…I wanted to volunteer but…" tears broke this man's face as his voice broke "…I have…I have a kid. I'm a lone parent, who would look after her if I died?"

Supporting this man in what way he could, Marcus muttered "There's been too much bravery and death today…may the Gods welcome the volunteers and everyone else who has died today, and if they don't then they don't deserve to be worshipped". With that and the mutual respect for the dead and the dying passing between the two men, they shook hands in a warriors grip before the soldier departed and Marcus returned to help the Queen.

**Leonis, Overview**

With every passing minute it seemed like the actions of the Leonosions was increasing exponentially. Across the planet more and more Legions began their search and rescue operations and prepared the towns and cities for the coming battles. Raptors and Ravens crisscrossed the skies mapping the new and in certain respect the oldest face of Leonis and carrying soldiers, medics, wounded and supplies to the necessary destinations. Other Raptors and Ravens and a handful of slightly larger military transports the size of a bus took off from their previous coordinates (a lot of time this was the middle of nowhere since due to the evacuation of personnel and equipment from the military bases, the best place to land the military vehicles where the risk of destruction was slight was the middle of nowhere). The destinations of these ships were the other 11 colonies and the 4 smaller lightly colonised planetoids.

Temporary bridges were erected, main roads were swept clear of vehicles, food warehouses and retail parks were raided by the military, safehouses were set up as were point defences and a single Raptor was diverted to Lake Cassidy and the suspected Graystones compound which had been nuked. This was a planet ready and now more than willing to fight for the right to survive. This was war.

**Major Natalie Ford**

"CAN ANYONE HEAR ME! WERE ROYAL LEGION, WERE HERE TO HELP! SHOUT IF YOU NEED HELP!"

Her helmet now hanging from a loop on her backpack now that the radiation levels were deemed safe enough, Natalie felt like she had been repeating herself forever as she called out her message to any possible survivors that were nearby. But as with the umpteen other times she had shouted she got no response yet again. Coming out of a block of apartments on the other side of the road, Jammer and Sam shook their heads. "Nothing?" Natalie questioned.

A grim look to his face, Sam replied "There were some bodies in there, we moved them ready for cremation but there was nobody alive. Frankly I would be surprised if there was, you can get up three flights of stairs before you find out the buildings an empty shell". This was something that was becoming quite common to the squad, empty shell syndrome or in other words a building where the front wall stands but everything inside has collapsed. Cremation would begin when the sector had been cleared, they would double back, pour tylium fuel (for a hotter burn than diesel) on the bodies and set them alight. It was a harsh and disgusting method of dealing with the dead, but they didn't have time to dig mass graves and they couldn't allow the bodies to remain and spread disease.

As Natalie was about to reply, Pauli coming up beside her interrupted, "Shh…" they all went quiet and listened carefully but whatever Pauli had heard, it had stopped.

"IS THERE ANYONE OUT THERE", Natalie shouted again and listened carefully afterwards. When nobody replied, Natalie was about to take a step when she heard it, the sound of a frantic dog barking away maybe fifty metres down the street. Noting where they had finished off, Natalie and her squad took off in the direction of the barking. Jammer was first to reach the apartment and started trying to kick the door in, but each time his boot pounded against the PVC door, Jammer was forced back. Reaching the door Pauli said "Allow me" before reaching out to try the handle. Without much force the handle turned and Pauli pushed the unlocked door open causing Sam and Natalie to burst out in laughter at Jammers mistake.

The laughter quickly died away as Natalie called out to any survivors as they stepped into the apartment complex. Smoke hung in the air and rubble lay on the ground but the building was still in good condition. Noting that it looked like it was built in the years just after the first war, Natalie wasn't all that surprised. Following the barking, the squad moved down a flight of steps that led down to a basement. Then they started hearing voices start calling out for help. Turning the last flight of stairs, the squad came to a door blocked by a fallen concrete beam. Double checking that the beam wasn't propping up anything that could collapse on them, Pauli pulled out a length of rope and looped it round the beam before he and the rest of the squad moved up the stairs, each grabbing hold of the rope and in tandem giving a strong pull and then another until the concrete beam groaned and with a massive bang crashed to the ground and through the bottom two steps.

Stepping over the cracked beam, Natalie pulled the door open to a reveal a large laundry room and inside, with tears in their eyes and overjoyous expressions on their faces 53 men women and children and one very wise Tauron Shepherd (German Shepherd, dog) who cocked her head at Natalie.

All Natalie could say was "You're safe now", she only wished they were.

**Well I hope you liked this chapter. I intend this story to be a vivid realisation of a planet at war and will be focusing around the capital city and turning it into a Stalingrad situation. It may seem like it would be highly improbable that you would be able to build the ARCs (similar just better to the Vaults in Fallout) in secret but in the future I plan on having flashbacks take place that will cover the inception of the ARCs as well as their construction.**

**The main army, the Legions I am loosely basing on the Roman Legions but crossed with a modern day army. The makeup of a Legion from bottom up is;**

**Fireteam (made up of four highly trained Legionaries similar to commandoes)**

**Pincer (made up of two fireteams)**

**Century (made up of 10 Pincers, usually supported by up to 20 Auxilaries)**

**Cohort (made up of 8 Centuries)**

**Legion (Made up of 5 Cohorts)**

**Would appreciate reviews, both good and bad and will update soon.**


	2. Chapter 2 The Three Beasts

**First off I apologise for the bad grammar, my apostrophe and question mark keys don't work.**

**Battlestar Galactica: The Lions of Leonis**

**Chapter 2: The Three Beasts**

**The shape of things to come**

"Scorpia…Tauron…Picon. They were hit the hardest".

"Caprica…The fleet must have learnt how to combat the Cylons".

"Gemenon, Libran, Sagittaron, Virgon, Aerilon, Canceron. The fleet must have been hit hard, most of the wrecks seem to indicate hit and run tactics".

"Leonis…The fleet must have made their final stand here".

"Find the fleet…protect them at all costs. They must survive".

"Commander…it's the Pegasus"

"…**It may seem that all hope is lost and that the end has finally come, but…we will endure…" Field Marshal Montgomery, The Leonis Legions**

**Willow (Cylon Homeworld)**

Named after the prophet, Sister Clarice Willow who had led them to freedom from the oppressive humans, the Cylon Homeworld was a hostile planet to humans. With an elliptical orbit, the planet was either too hot at its closest approach to the sun or too cold at its furthest from the sun. And then the seasons were unpredictable unless you carefully studied the planet. Millions of years ago its sole moon had cleared the planet and been pulled into the star where it added its mass to the stellar fire. The loss of this moon had meant that the planet had an unstable axis and so could go through what felt like 5 year summers and 2 year winters and vice versa. This meant that despite the abundance of a safe atmosphere for humans and H20 the planet had no true biosphere, instead it relied on a hardened ecosystem of algae and amoeba. Complex, intelligent life was almost impossible on this deadly planet. That was unless complex intelligent life migrated here and could withstand the extremes.

The Cylons had made it here and had built a number of vast cities on the surface which tapped into the many hydrothermal vents and volcanic regions dotting the massive equator. It was more of a manufacturing settlement than a city and had been one of the main sources of the Centurion manufacturing facilities.

In the exact centre of the city in a vast metallic domed room, seven Cylons were meeting. These seven Cylons were seen as the seconds in command of the Cylon population, the firsts being away chasing down the Colonial Fleet.

An argument was taking place over how the war had been run and how it was going to be run.

"We can't hold the Colonies with what we have left and still chase down Adama and his merry band of refugees. We have to totally destroy the Colonies" James Cavil shouted over the others, determined to hold his ground.

"You can't be serious" Sharon replied "Yes, destroy the colonists but we can't destroy the planets. We need the resources they can provide us not to mention the history kept there".

"We don't need anything of the sort. We are machines, all we need is power and we can gather the resources from other places", Cavil replied.

The argument kept going back and forth until finally Simon decided to act as the voice of reason. In a quiet voice he put forward "It will take us at least a year to start replacing our losses although I would like to suggest we add thicker armour to our Basestars. Until then I believe that the wisest choice would be to reactivate the mothballed ships and hold the colonies with those while we repair the rest of our Basestars and construct more".

"That's only half the problem…" Cavil butted in but was stopped, this time by Natalie.

"We can pull Centurions from our planets and installations for the invasion fleet. The Colonials don't know where our installations are and even if they did there is nothing that they can do about it. We invade Leonis with everything we can muster before the week is out and we send a smaller invasion fleet to Virgon. Meanwhile we move on a revised schedule with the rest of the Colonies".

"What about Adamas fleet".

"We let John chase after it although why he hasn't destroyed them yet is anyone's guess".

Leobon added "We do have one last problem. Some fleet ships have gone missing. These include the Battlestars Pegasus, Storm, Opus, Pythia, Enterprise, and Arion…"

"A second fleet" Deanna asked.

"Possibly" Sharon answered "Either way we have to find and destroy them".

"And the invasion of Leonis?" Doral asked.

"We do need to act soon" Natalie answered "The longer we wait the harder its going to be".

Nodding, Leobon said "Two days and we will have everything we need in place. In two days the Cylons will march".

**Orbit of Leonis**

**First day**

A mighty battle had been fought here. Tumbling hulks of scores of ships from both the Colonial Fleet and The Cylons drifted amongst each other and in between them thousands of torn apart Vipers, Raptors and Heavy Raiders dotted the battlefield. They were all dead, or so it would seem.

Despite the threat of a still orbiting Cylon Fleet and the occasional flights of Raiders passing through the wreckage conducting patrols, men and women still lived, still breathed, still fought. But the conditions of the fight had now changed. Drifting through the wreckage with barely a dot on a dradis screen and with so little power that a calculator would have more came a ghost. The Raptor, like the true ghost that it was slowly rotated as it passed into a vast landing bay scorched by multiple missile burns and twisted hull plates before it finally came to rest by an access hatch. The hatch to the Raptor opened up allowing two suited marines and a pilot to exit. A line was fired out towards the hull next to the Battlestars hatch with the electro-magnetic grapple on the end locking it in place. Attaching the other end to a hook just inside of the Raptor each of the team steadily pulled themselves along the line and towards the hatch.

Turning the leaver and then pulling on the locking mechanism the lead marine with all his might pushed the hatch open allowing them to then pull themselves against the zero gravity and into the airlock. Turning on their helmet lamps only when they were inside the last one through closed the hatch behind them while a marine went to the other end of the airlock and after checking a gauge began the manual pumping of air into the airlock. The cold white gas steadily started to fill the room and it wasn't long before a hiss was finally heard by the pilots as sound was finally able to carry. Banging three times on the inner hatch the pilot began to unscrew the lock while the two marines took up firing positions. Pushing it open the pilots and the marines were immediately blinded by a bright glaring light and the shouting of half a dozen marines telling them to lower their weapons.

Responding the two marines lowered their rifles but didn't drop them even if that were possible in the zero gee conditions. A female marine, obviously the one in charge called out "Relax, they're with us. They're ghosts".

This did nothing to stop a marine rushing forward and slamming the butt of his rifle into the face of one of the pilots knocking him out cold. The other marines shifted their aim to him as he lowered his rifle shouting "He's a fracking skinjob" true enough when they rolled him over the face of a Two was revealed.

**7 minutes before Cylon attack on Colonies**

**28 Light-years from Helios Beta, Orson Patch**

**Experimental Battlestar Arion (Colonial Fleet R&D X-471-M21-Alpha under command of Rear Admiral Hudson)**

There were few people in the fleet that had the most influence on the future designs of the colonial fleet than 48 year old Rear Admiral Hudson. He'd spent the last 20 years of his career since he was a CAG in the R&D fleet, was among the first pilots to test the Mk-6 and Mk-7 Viper and had tested out more than 40 different classes of warship and support ship. Ten Years into his career in the R&D he was granted his first commission as temporary commander of the Gorgon class Battlestar and under his and his officers advice had scrapped this class as being inadequate to serve as a line warship.

Over his years of command he had passed and failed many warships until he was granted the status of Rear Admiral and direct leader of the entire R&D wing of the fleet. The R&D fleet however was only a BSG size but a promotion was a promotion. He had another 2 years left before he was to be permanently assigned to line duty which would likely come with another promotion since the last 3 heads of the R&D fleet had become one of the leading five Admirals within only a couple of years of leaving the fleet. The reasoning was simple, to be in command of an experimental ship equipped with all the latest advances in Colonial tech meant that you had to be able to defend it from the many terrorist/pirate organisations in the colonies, the Cylons or even an inside job of a crewmember out to make a quick Cubit selling the tech on the black market. Hudson had beaten them all off even the tests of himself that the fleet resorted to.

As he walked to the CIC, Hudson swept his eyes over the fine lines of the corridors reflecting that this Battlestar was revealing itself to be a diamond of a vessel. She was beating the speed records of any ship of her size, she was one of the most agile Battlestars (outside of the pocket Battlestars like the Valkyrie class) and had one of the best armaments he had ever seen. Combine all that with one of the most powerful Dradis arrays he had seen outside of a space station or planet and four spate flightpods which added a third more Vipers than the Mercury Class and it would seem like this was definitely going to be passed and put into production but Hudson felt like something had to go wrong and already he had found one area which needed changing before the ship went into production.

Entering the CIC, Hudson was greeted by a number of officers saluting him. Returning the salute, Hudson approached the information table and his XO James Hendricks. "Are our pilots in"

"Yes sir. Jump in 3 minutes. Sassy has reported we have one Viper down. The Chief thinks there is a microfracture in the heat extraction fins slowing down the cooling but he's grounded the rest of the nines until he's had a chance to check the rest. If there are microfractures in all the fins then TMC is going to be going out of business".

Hudson replied "It's their own fault, they know that we expect the best quality and yet they persist in giving us substandard parts. I mean this is the fourth time that this has happened with parts they have supplied. At least with Imperial we got what we asked for even if they were twice as expensive".

Reading through a number of reports, Hudson nodded at a crewman who brought him a cup of coffee just like clockwork. Time seemed to slip away as the time to jump came.

The navigation officer spoke up "Jumping in 10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2…" space seemed to stretch as the laws of physics were bent and space folded. For many the first few times were sickening but eventually you got used to it but you could never sleep through it.

The jump came in a blinding flash of light and the ship disappeared.

Reappearing twenty light-years away Arion encountered a total systems wide blackout.

"Report!" Hudson ordered his command crew as they were plunged into darkness.

**Battlestar Therion, CIC**

It didn't matter where you were on this floating wreck, there was no gravity, there were drifting clouds of smoke and there were dead bodies. The CIC was no different. Emergency lighting had been set up in what was seen as the brain of the Battlestar due to the fact that all the generators of this warship were nothing more than pieces of slag due to the hostile actions this Battlestar had been involved in. These lights were a glaring bright menace to those working to repair the CIC and other sections of the Battlestar but in this case they were a welcome menace because they allowed the crew to realise that they were still alive, against all the odds they had made it this far.

Commander Burkett "stood" with his left hand gripping the information table meaning he wasn't going anywhere and his right tightly clasping a rebreather to his face allowing him some cleaner breaths of air. He was angry at the Cylons, the government and most of all himself. It was his job to take care of his crew and protect the colonies and it seemed to him at least that he had failed in both regards. Admiral Adama had left hours ago with the last of the fleet and without any way of making contact with him without alerting the Cylons or performing an evacuation of his ship, Burkett had been forced to do nothing. But they were still alive which was more than could be said for most of the fleet.

"Colonel, any word from the engineers?"

Colonel Regis a recent addition from Virgon replied "Reports are still coming through…from what I can tell we might be able to cannibalise parts and get one up and running".

"One isn't enough, we need at least two".

At that moment the Captain Alexander Chen, the CAG of Ghost Squadron entered. His face was dripping with sweat and his face was bright red. Approaching Commander Burkett, he saluted and then spoke "Commander, I have some good news".

"About time, go ahead".

"More than half of Ghost Squadron has returned. I need to ground three of them for advanced radiation poisoning and the rest of us have varying degrees of radiation sickness".

"Are there any more pilots out there" the Colonel asked.

"Undoubtedly. The problem is that there is that much debris and radiation out there that were struggling to find any live pirates. We only survived this long due to the Mark nines superior hull".

"Nevertheless there will still be pilots out there. Dose up on radiation meds, get back out there and bring in whoever you find".

Turning to get to it Chen was pulled short by the Commander "I'm not finished yet. There must be a number of intact disaster pods out there, I know you don't really have the manpower but you need to check them out and evacuate any survivors and while you're at it take some engineers with you and salvage whatever we need".

"Yes sir. Anything else"

"Just, Im sorry about Dozil but we have solid intel. He is a definite Cylon".

"Makes you think, doesn't it".

**Outer edge of Colonial Space**

**Battlestar Pegasus**

Life aboard Pegasus had been easier during the attacks than a lot of other Battlestars, easier just not as deadly. Pegasus had been at the Scorpia Fleet Shipyards when the Cylons had attacked and had narrowly escaped certain destruction in the first wave when she had blind jumped. A blind jump is the most dangerous of all jumps mainly due to the fact that blind jumps tended to bring you out near objects with a large gravity based on your point of origin. Tended to at least just not in this case. Instead the Battlestar Pegasus came out in a deserted area of space just past the red line.

It had taken hours for them to get the Pegasus back up and running, she'd been hit by multiple nuclear missiles at the shipyards which had knocked out both the main and backup wireless systems. Still, despite all the hard work the DC teams had put into getting Pegasus back up and running they only seemed to be hitting the tip of the iceberg. Entering the CIC, Rear Admiral Cain was faced with just what a daunting task repairing the Mercury Class Battlestar would be before they even got back into the fight. A new transfer in the form of Lieutenant Kendra Shaw turned towards Cain after settling the faceplate back over the tactical console and getting confirmation that it was now operable "Sir, tactical's back up and running".

This news was a welcome relief to Helena, the tactical systems had been among the hardest hit and this news meant that Cain could finally start to get an idea of where the Pegasus would be needed. Despite getting long range communications up and running an hour ago and still having Raptors with their own wireless systems and jumpdrives they were still too far from the colonies to receive any contact more than a few days old (speed of light) and with the state the Pegasus was in and not knowing how far the Cylons had evolved technologically, regulations held that they couldn't risk revealing themselves to their own forces in case the Cylons were able to follow them back. But now that the last of the systems were up and running and had been stripped of their networks they at least stood a fighting chance despite the structural damage.

"Good job, lieutenant. How long have you been here"

Shrugging and rubbing her hand along the back of her neck, Kendra replied "I don't know sir. I guess I never left".

Cain was finally starting to get an idea of the officer she had just gained and as she summed her up she realised that with a few pointers she just might be someone she could come to rely on, a Razor. "Button yourself up Lieutenant".

Seeing what Cain meant she started buttoning up her tunic. As the Admiral was about to move onto other matters, Kendra spoke "Admiral, I wanted to apologise for my actions earlier. I…I froze…"

Looking back at her, Cain intoned "Make sure that it doesn't happen again. I need razors. If you freeze then you risk the lives of everyone on this ship…you risk the lives of the entire Colonies. We have to be Razors. Dismissed".

**Battlestar Arion, 6 Hours later**

"Sir, I think I've figured out why we lost power" Chief engineer Wright said as his face was illuminated by the yellow glow of an emergency chemical lamp. At a nod from Hudson, Wright said "We actually encountered the power failure within a few thousandths of a second before we jumped and residual carbon scoring on the port side of the hull seems to indicate we were hit by a pulsars beam, most likely it was the Serang binary only a dozen lightyears away although it was a powerful pulse to say the least. It was trillions to one odds really especially when you consider we were jumping at that exact moment".

"Why does that matter" Hudson asked.

"We only managed to catch a brief blow from the pulsar. Any longer and it likely would have meant hull breaches. However the excess of power was enough to throw off our jump. We think it's by as much as 70 light-years".

"70 light-years" Hudson asked with shock in his voice.

"Navigation is still working on an exact match using the optical gear but we've narrowed down our location to the Trimian Expanse" the XO added.

"How long until our systems are back online" Hudson asked.

Looking down at his clipboard, the Chief answered "12 hours at the least. We're severing the network since there is a chance we could be hit again combined with the fact were still having discharges in some systems so it's safer to isolate each one and purge them".

The Head Deck Chief added "Unfortunately our Raptors systems were also susceptible to the pulsar but we can get them all back up within 7 hours".

"Alright, get to work".

**Battlestar Therion, Engineering**

To stand here in this darkened section of Engineering for more than a few moments was to be attacked by a cacophony of loud, ringing bangs, the whirring whines of angle-grinders and power machinery and the echoing call of engineers and dc crews seemingly coming from a hundred directions at once. It was disorientating to the extreme and was enough to make Burkett feel sick to the stomach but that could have been because of the rancid stench of burnt flesh and oily black smoke still hanging in the air. A lot of good men and women had been killed in this section of the ship and now Burkett was forced to face the consequences of command.

Taking a handful of steps forward, a rebreather strapped to his face and holding a flashlight at shoulder height in his right hand, Burkett ducked underneath a fractured structural support beam and was forced to crawl on hands and knees for a few metres before he was eventually able to stand up again. Portable Extractor Fans (PEFs) had been set up next to where he stood and the acrid black smoke was clearing just enough for him to see the engineers at work in the vast room trying to reassemble two generators from the parts of half a dozen scavenged from throughout the fleet. The acting chief engineer, himself only a second class engineer a day ago took no notice of the Commander since he had so much work on his hands building an entirely new generator from the hundreds of parts around him. Another group of engineers were taking apart the salvaged yet damaged generators brought in from the other torn apart ships.

"Commander, can I help you" Engineer Gaynn asked as he dropped a coil of cabling on the floor next to himself. His face was so covered in black smoke mixed in with a dozen cuts and a blackened bandage covering his forehead that he was almost unrecognisable. As soon as the coil was dropped, Burkett took notice of the bandage running around the man's left hand as it seemed it was fractured yet testament to the man's willingness to survive he was doing heavy work even with the injury.

Removing his mask, Burkett replied having to shout over the din "I just wanted to see first-hand how far along you are with the generators".

Glancing over to the acting chief, Gaynn replied "Were working round the clock so it should only be 3 hours before we have the first one online and another hour before we get the second up and running although…I'm sorry sir I shouldn't say".

"No, go ahead".

"It's just Chief Jenkins doesn't really know what he's doing, he's making mistakes that are costing us time fixing. He's a drive specialist not a generator specialist and he's trying to micromanage everything" it was obvious that Gaynn didn't like having to say these things but the safety and security of this ship was at risk.

"Thank you, I'll deal with it" as Gaynn went back to work, Burkett realised that maybe the worst thing he could do would be to interfere directly and talk to the acting chief, instead he went over to the wall mounted sound powered phone and was patched through to the CIC "Burkett here, Sam I need you to get ghost squadron to do a priority search for any surviving chief engineers or engineers with three or more years experience".

"Aye, sir. Ghost leader is just returning with one of Atlantia's Raptors I'll have the marines notify them as soon as they dock". Burkett placed the phone back in the socket and moved on to the rest of the engineering sections checking on how work was going, in the back of his mind however was that if they didn't find a suitable replacement for Jenkins within the hour then he would have to properly intervene.

**Leonis Battlefield wreckage, Drifting Raptor (Designation unknown)**

He'd spent hour upon hour drifting in space in this damaged Raptor watching the end of the worlds come about. He spent his entire military career as a marine on board the Battlestar Atlantia, but all he could seem to remember of that life were the rapid-fire explosions of the Cylon boarding parties tearing through his squad mates along with any crew they could find. It was…it was hell. The screams stayed with him more than the sights, the echoing call of the Centurions boots as they covered the distance between their targets in rapid succession.

The marines had fought, and they had fought hard. IEDs were created and packed with thermite but there was only so much thermite held on the Battlestar and there were far too many Centurions. What was even far more vivid were the faces of marines who were killed by their own IEDs when the Cylons shot at the devices when the marines weren't ready, their screams seemed to torture his very soul as their skin dripped from their faces. He couldn't bear to see his friends in such agonising pain, an extended death really, he remembered raising his rifle as his tortured friends shuddered on the floor as their screams ran through them, he remembered squeezing the trigger and the shots bursting their foreheads apart putting them out of their misery but not those around them who had to witness it.

The rest was an agonising chaotic mess of memories as they had struggled to even stall the Cylon advance with everything they had right up to point defence and antiship ammunition. In the end they had been forced to evacuate when the Kraken (Cylon Colony) had jumped in and started to tear apart the remaining fleet ships. His commanding officer Marine Sergeant Munroe had literally thrown him into a waiting Raptor along with over a dozen other crew and marines. The lifts to the flightdeck were unpowered so an assault laden Raptor which was ahead of them had to blow through the lift to clear them an exit, luckily the airlock was working and bulkheads could cut off the rest of the hanger so the bay didn't depressurize straight away. They'd torn away as fast as they could to the waiting Valkyrie but it was no use, a nuclear missile had struck the hull of the Atlantia and the subsequent EMP was enough to overpower the military hardened electronics and knock out the Raptors systems.

From their vantage point they had drifted, watching the world around them turn into a minefield of drifting bodies and collapsed ships. Wherever the Cylons came they destroyed without mercy, the lights of the explosions dimming all hope within those few survivors left and in the Raptor a smell was building as a medic struggled to staunch the escaping blood of a screaming petty officer. It felt like days but was only minutes before the petty officer died of blood loss and they were left with his cold body and his blood floating about the cabin. Then the Cylons seemed to leave them alone as no one fired back at them.

A deckhand had managed to repair the life-support somehow but all that was doing was delaying their deaths. Some just couldn't take their fellow survivors wailing at the deaths of their families and friends, another had to be shot because he was fighting to escape the claustrophobia and get out of the hatch. Eventually the suicides came. After the first, a gun against the chin, no one really paid much attention, so lost was their humanity, they were all now disjointed personalities trapped in the shells of their bodies and the Raptor. All hope was lost, they were all going to die here, and they knew that, it was a certainty they just had to come to terms with. Blood drifted in the zero gravity coating the crew and consoles alike.

With only five remaining alive in the raptor, the marine had made his peace with the Gods that he had rejected all of his life and lifted his sidearm to his head and closed his eyes before a flicker broke through his eyelids. Opening them he saw a Viper in front of the Raptor flashing a light in the cockpit. Struggling up and trying to control himself in the zero gravity, he made his way to the cockpit and took his flashlight from his harness. Clicking it a few times, the Raptor responded with three flashes of its own before it fired an electromagnetic harpoon at the hull of the Raptor. Two clunks reverberated through the hull before the viper turned around and slowly accelerated pulling the Raptor behind it. It was five minutes of flight before they made it to their destination, the port flightpod of the Therion. As soon as they passed the entrance, the trap caught the Raptor and its electromagnetic energies steadily increased as it passed further through slowing it down before it eventually scraped across the deck to a halt.

A tube was extended to the raptor, snaking around the ship before making contact with the hatch, atmosphere built up within until it was equal to the Raptors before a group of fully suited Marines opened the hatch, shining their torches and rifles into the cabin asking for names and checking their faces. When it came to him, the Marine replied "Corporal Seth Hudson, Atlantia".

**Battlestar Arion, 14 Hours later**

"Beginning full systems power up" the Chief Engineer announced over the wireless before his words were followed by the CIC lighting powering up along with the numerous consoles. "The jump drives still have enough residual charge that we will be able to make our first jump within ten minutes, however I would advise against it, Admiral until we have fully restored all of our systems".

Turning to his XO, Hudson ordered "Start plotting our jumps back to Colonial space and get me a full assessment".

**Leonis Gunstar Hound Debris Field**

The not so stealth Raptor S silently manoeuvred through the debris field surrounding the Gunstars position. The dradis was only set to passive scan so as to reduce the Cylons abilities to detect them. All that seemingly remained of the Gunstar seemed to be a dense cloud of debris which had been compacted into this cluster by opposing explosions to the debris velocity. It seemed like the Raptor was flying through a rainstorm and every once in a while it felt like the Raptor was hit by a tree trunk. For those inside it was a grating journey as if they were being attacked every step of the way into the deep dark depths of the labyrinth of Tartarus. Red light shone on the helmet covered faces of the packed in pilots and marines, a cold sweat seeping down their faces and dripping into their eyes and their stomachs churning just as much as the debris field threatening to blow their contents into the helmets and their bowels feeling like they had just eaten a bad kebab.

But all that would never stop them from completing their mission. Already the passive dradis scans had revealed the presence of at least two disaster pods within the debris field with another couple of larger contacts which may hold more disaster pods. There were two commonly known types of disaster pods in existence and one of them was technically wrong. The wrong one was actually a disaster crate which held emergency food, medical supplies, water and a generator and was only called a disaster pod because it sounded better than a disaster crate. The other type, the one that they were after was in fact a section of a warship which was designed to survive the best chance of surviving the ship being destroyed. The disaster pod had an armoured coating just like the outer armour of a Battlestar although it was thinner to a certain degree, it had its own power source and separate basic systems like air and water and a small amount of basic, long life rations. Due to the increased cost of them they were only located in certain areas of a warship, the CIC, Med Bay, one near engineering and depending on the type of ship up to 5 more were spread throughout it. It wasn't certain if the disaster pod would survive the destruction of its ship, it all depended on a variety of factors chiefly the force of the explosion but if it did survive and depending on how many people were in the disaster pod then it was possible for those inside to survive for up to four days, supposedly long enough for pickup in a normal war.

More and more debris collided against the Raptor forcing the Pilot to take the drastic action of using the manoeuvring thrusters to pull the nose up so that they were continuing forward belly first since the armour there was a lot thicker than the cockpit window. Suddenly just as the debris reached a crescendo that threatened to collapse the hull and made a marine piss himself in its intensity, the debris suddenly stopped and silence reigned supreme with only the occasional bang against the hull. Reorienting the Raptor, the Pilot announced "Looks like were in the eye, the debris must have gotten this far before something stopped it. Setting course for closest contact".

The Raptor engines fired a short burst of thrust pushing it towards the drifting disaster pod. Behind them another two normal Raptors which had followed their exact course through the debris field broke off their pursuit and set course for the other contacts.

The stealth Raptor slowed as it came close to the spinning disaster pod and the pilot waited a moment as she carefully watched the spin all the while counting down under her breath trying to work out the speed and shape of the spin without risking their position by turning on more computers. When she felt ready she tapped in some numbers and started to steadily match the spin while getting them in position to access the hatch. It took three minutes of careful manoeuvring before the spin was matched and she moved the Raptor towards the hatch belly first. A faded stencilled name came into view throughout their positioning revealing this as "D-POD 3 ENGINEERING GS HOUND. 15582b76" meaning that this was the third disaster pod located in the Gunstar Hounds Engineering section, the rest was the serial number. Also located around this disaster pod were a series of "Xs" and lines with numbers designed to allow a Raptor to be fully aware of where the hatch was located if they came in belly first.

A heavy thump ran through the Raptor as the shuttle hit the disaster pod and quickly before the disaster pod could fly away from them the electromagnetic grapples were powered securing the Raptor to the Disaster pod and the highly resistant seal descended around the hatch before filling with an equal atmosphere. The pilot called out "Were docked, seals check out. Cutting engines".

As one the marines in the back stated moving. Corporal Seth Hudson opening the belly hatch before pushing himself into the hole. Looking at a sensor attached to the door, Hudson called out "O2 Sensor is damaged. Can't make a thing...wait…" Seth was sure he had felt something below his feet. Dropping down onto his haunches he placed his hand against the hatch and there it was. Bang, Bang, Bang and a very faint "Help" being conducted through the hull.

Looking up to the two other marines he called out "We've got survivors, opening hatch". He got a grip on the wheel and started to try to turn it, struggling with all of his might it just wouldn't budge "The hatch is sealed tight, the wheels probably warped. Pass the burner". A marine passed down a portable welding torch and just before he activated the flame he shouted at the top of his lungs with both hands on the hatch "STAND BACK WE NEED TO BURN THROUGH!" Moving the flame forward he spent a minute burning through the multiple locking bolts on the hatch before he turned it off and passed it back up to a waiting marine. Bracing himself by grapping tight hold of the Raptors floor, he through his lower body in this small amount of zero gravity (space between both ship and pod) at the hatch. It took another two attempts before it gave way and opened.

A series of flashlights beamed up into the Raptor temporarily blinding the man before his eyes adjusted and when they did it felt like he was laying down compared to those inside the Pod. Pushing himself away from the Raptor and into the pod his feet suddenly dropped towards the disaster pods floor as they entered the gravitated field before he stood up and pulled his rifle out from behind his back and activated the attached flashlight.

One of the engineers aboard came forward saying "Thank the Gods you're here, we thought we would die alone out here…"

Seth interrupted "I'm sorry I have to cut this short, we don't have much time. Are you in charge here".

"Yeah. Chief Engineer Kale, Gunstar Hound. I have 23 survivors in here including five injured".

"Frak. Can they be moved in the one go. We need every engineer we can get on the Therion".

"The Battlestar Therion made it. What about the others".

"The remaining fleet under Admiral Adama was routed and the Therion didn't really make it. She's in a hell of a state right now and we've been doing a priority search for engineers. Now can we move everyone at once. We have a Raptor S".

The Chief seemed to think for a moment before saying "We have no choice, it'll have to be standing room only but we can't stay here anymore".

"Alright get your people moving, we leave within five minutes", Seth moved off to start helping survivors onto the Raptor S.

**Leonis**

**Luminaire, Central Business District, Destiny Plaza**

Wiping the grimy sweat out of her eyes, Major Natalie Ford looked over the burning corpses. The bodies were those unfortunate colonials who had been struck down by the immense radiation of the thermonuclear missiles the Cylons had detonated in the atmosphere. Hundreds of bodies, bodies which Major Ford and her unit had to drag together in order to be sure they cremated them properly. The cremations were necessary due to the fact that they couldn't risk any diseases popping up due to the decomposing bodies but still, Natalie could barely stick the smell, that smell which seems to act as a subconscious warning. A warning to humans that death lies here.

Turning to look behind her, Natalie saw the truth of war. Large swathes of the central business district known as the Isle of Wolves acted as a torn mausoleum. Few buildings stood here in contrast to the rest of the city due to the fact that here the defences had broken down during the bombardment which allowed the Cylons nuclear missiles to hit at ground level. Thankfully the winds were heading away from Natalie but if they turned then the fallout from those missiles would reach her within only a couple of minutes at the most. Working here was a risk, her Geiger counter was already halfway to the danger zone but so long as there were survivors here and defences to ready then they would stay.

"You all right, sir" Sam asked as he moved to stand next to her, pulling a bandana away from his face so that he could breathe properly.

Without even turning to look at him, Natalie replied "I was wondering if my husband managed to get out of there alive. I haven't heard anything yet". James, her husband worked as an accountant for a shipping company with his office based on the Isle of Wolves. Things had been difficult for them in the past few months mainly due to him wanting her out of the Legion and she suspecting he was cheating on her. But still, she would have liked to know he was safe.

"He will be fine. ARC 32 is below the Wolves and word is that they're at capacity…"

Looking at him, Natalie replied "There were over a million people working in the CBD and 32 only holds a few hundred thousand". 32 was one of the largest ARCs constructed at 350,000 capacity mainly due to its location but what they did not know which Command did was that part of that ARC had collapsed due to the direct hit from a nuke.

Sam just replied "He's safe. He knows that you'll kick his arse if he dies. Come on, Pauli needs some help setting up the safe house and we need to be out of here in ten".

As they walked back to a nearby restaurant which looked like it was a solid stone building built in the enlightenment style, Natalie said "I'm sorry. Have you heard anything about your daughter".

Smiling, Sam nodded "Her school was one of the first places evacuate to 19. She's currently being moved back to 16" before he pulled the bandana back over his mouth saying "Rains are coming" nodding at the sky.

"We had better get moving then. We have to hide a tank in half an hour".

Sam looked at her before he burst out laughing "The end of the worlds and we can still find something to laugh at. Come on". Little did they know that the invasion would begin tomorrow.

**Battlestar Pegasus, 4 hours later**

Cain had rested as many of her crew as possible while the repair efforts were ongoing in the belief that they would likely be thrust back into the action as soon as they returned to the Colonies. Having a tired crew would be as useful as having a stoned crew if it came to fighting their way through to the Colonial Fleet. Chances were, she thought as she readied herself for the coming jump that they wouldn't be a priority for a position in a dock. After all, if the rest of the Colonies had been hit as hard as Scorpia's shipyards then there were going to be a lot of damaged ships in worse condition than Pegasus. But, she reasoned, there is no way that I am going in blind.

The jump had been planned to bring them out 28 light hours from Caprica so that she could get an assessment of the enemy strength and where the Colonial Fleet was holding.

"Dradis Contact!" Shaw called out. "Reading one contact, its Ranger".

"Confirmed…" Hoshi followed "…incoming message".

Through the loudspeakers the voice of Ranger spoke "Pegasus Actual Ranger. One contact jumped in at the edge of our dradis range…the contact registered as the Battlestar Arion".

"Shaw, is it in the database" Cain hadn't heard of the Battlestar Arion before but it was possible that Corman had been producing ships in secret.

Looking up from her console, Shaw answered "The Battlestar Arion is an experimental class in the R&D fleet. Fleet registry states it is under command of Rear Admiral Hudson and was undergoing long range tests. We don't have a flight plan logged".

Recognising Hudson and the R&D fleet, it all made sense to Cain. The flight plans of the research fleet were only ever logged at the highest of levels of the fleet and the only reason that they knew any of the data the computers brought up is because they had to search for the name of the ship. "XO, get that Raptor back on board and get us ready for jump. Load all Vipers".

**Battlestar Arion, 12 Hours later**

Despite the ftl drives still having residual charge, it took a further 10 hours before Hudson received the all clear from his Chief Engineer. They decided to take it cautiously on the jumps back to the Colonies with a maximum of one jump every forty minutes in case there was something that they had missed. On the upside, Hudson thought at least we now have proof of what a Gamma Ray Burster can do to even a hardened ship, it would give the techs and gearheads plenty to think about and could possibly lead to new breakthroughs in military tech.

They performed one more jump which brought them out on the edge of Colonial Space, just 29 light hours out from Caprica when all hell broke loose.

"Admiral…" the wireless operator called out "…you're going to want to hear this". This far out from the colonies wireless signals were in the past. In essence they were hearing the past.

Walking over to him, Hudson picked up two headsets and handed one to his XO. Putting his own on, Hudson listened to the wireless messages that the operator had highlighted "Corman and Rand are lost. This is Admiral Nagala taking command of Atlantia. All available ships are to regroup at present position for counter-attack" a printout came out with Virgon highlighted as the location.

Looking up at the wireless operator, Hudson asked "Is this some kind of joke".

"No sir. It was sent in the clear and the airwaves are flooded with more messages just like that. The colonies, they're under attack by the Cylons, sir".

"XO, set condition one throughout the shi…"

"Dradis Contact!" the tactical officer called out, "Reading one contact, at the edge of our range. Scratch that its launching fighters…" The XO ordered Condition One and Vipers were pushed into their tubes while the tactical officer continued "Getting Colonial IFF…it's the Battlestar Pegasus, sir".

"Confirm" Hudson ordered the wireless operator.

A moment passed until he answered "Confirmed. I have Pegasus Actual on the line sir".

**Battlestar Pegasus**

"Alert Vipers are launching, the rest are holding in the tubes and all stations stand ready" Pegasus XO called out.

He was soon followed by Lieutenant Shaw "The Battlestar Arion is at extreme DRADIS range on 160 Karom 228. They appear to be flying a CAP, I'm reading three Vipers and a Raptor".

Cain knew that they had to be cautious and should never accept the Battlestar Arion as a friendly until she had confirmation. "Mr Hoshi, open a channel and request authorisation codes".

Hoshi got to work straight away and after passing the codes onto Kendra who ran them through her own console he nodded "They're authentic, sir".

Smiles went around the CIC and Helena placed her headset on "Patch me through", a second later a crackle on the headset answered her. "This is Pegasus Actual to Arion Actual…"

There was a brief pause before a male voice answered "This is Arion Actual. Admiral what's going on"

Trying to decide how to put it, but in the end deciding on the blunt option, Helena replied "Were at war. Just over 28 Hours ago the Cylons launched an unprovoked attack on the Scorpian shipyards and likely the surface of Scorpia. We were forced to commit to a blind jump and are currently working our way back to the colonies".

Admiral Hudson it seemed had more information than she did as he replied "The wireless messages were receiving Sir seem to indicate that Picon was also hit. Admiral Nagala has taken command of the fleet at Virgon".

"Then it's worse than I believe. Are you combat effective Admiral".

"Yes, sir. We've had to sever our networks due to overloads caused by a Gamma Ray Burster but we are armed, have a full crew and damage was minimal and has been mostly repaired. Arion is However untested in combat. We were scheduled for combat trials in two weeks but I believe she will be able to hold her own".

"Be glad you severed it, the Cylons employed a Virus in a backdoor built into the CNP. Also I may need you to transfer some crew over. Were currently at two thirds strength".

"Give me a list of the personnel you need and I'll see what I can do Admiral and I'll have my chiefs remove the networks from the Vipers".

"I'll get that list sent over and we'll be jumping in 30 minutes. Until then I'm moving Pegasus into a flanking position and I suggest you get your personnel working on finding out what happened".

"Already on it, Sir. Ill also send over some of the newest equipment spares that we have including DRADIS updates, none of them require a network, Sir but I suggest you upload the new DRADIS software since it will almost double the range available".

"How long will it take to update".

"Twenty minutes, for those twenty minutes you will be blind but we can use our own DRADIS and you can deploy more Raptors"

It was a gamble to install the new software this close to danger but, Helena reasoned we could do with having an increased DRADIS range, it would give us longer to deploy our squadrons and gather Intel without being discovered. "Okay, send the disks over. Fisk, deploy another half squadron of Raptors 20 klicks out and surrounding the Pegasus".

The overweight, usually jolly man replied "Yes, sir. Raptors will be away in two minutes".

"And Fisk, once the software has been updated I want Raptors sent out to scout all the twelve colonies".

"Yes, sir. But what about the mining and civilian outposts"

"Concentrate on the Colonies".

**Virgon Orbit**

**Raptor 117Pegasus**

In a burst of white light, the scout raptor sent by Pegasus appeared over Virgon with the majority of its systems on standby in order to reduce their DRADIS signature as much as possible. The ECO Ensign James "Clanker" Treiss looking at his dradis board quickly shouted "EVASIVE MANEOUVERS MULTIPLE DRADIS CONTACTS 400 METRES STARBOARD AND CLOSING…JUMP THE SHIP".

The Pilot "Lieutenant Yvette "Thorn" Samber fought at the controls aiming to pull them starboard and accelerate the ship away from the rapidly approaching Raiders trying to put them into an evasive course just long enough for the jumpdrive to recharge but with the Cylons being right on top of them there was little chance of it recharging in time. "Input the coordinates!" she shouted as she flicked the controls to pull the Raptor up.

"Missile lock…incoming missiles. Dropping the decoys". A hammer blow ran through the Raptor as the three drones it held on its undercarriage were dropped.

"Our best chance is going through them we cant outrun them" Thorn shouted back before she had to struggle with the Raptor careering out of control as a missile detonated against a decoy which was within twenty metre of the ship. The three Raptors took all the advantage of this as they could when they accelerated forward with their guns tearing into the boxy spacecrafts fuselage. When the pass was done all that was left of the Raptor and its crew was a tumbling, venting, dead wreck. The news that Virgon was only controlled by thousands of Raiders patrolling its space and one damaged Basestar would never reach Pegasus.

**Leonis**

**Luminaire**

**ARC-16**

Pushing a gurney away from the convoy of vehicles, Queen Alexandria along with the rest of the medical staff from the Sacred Paeon Hospital were directed to a large entrance surrounded by barricades and machine gun nests. Rushing past dozens of auxiliaries still preparing the defences, Alexandria bypassed the 4 foot thick doors and entered into a killing ground with the corridor opening up into a conical shape with the thinnest part being where the Queen was. Continuing to rush forward while her aide told her that the design was likely so that if the entrance came under assault by centurions a much stronger defence could be put up because of the choke point, it took almost five minutes before she could get to the elevator. Designed to allow a full century plus their gear to get to the entrance, the lift was large to say the least and allowed up to half of the patients and medical staff in this wave to descend to the second checkpoint.

The Queen and the medical staff passed through a further three chokepoints before they managed to get to the main areas of the ARC. As the Queen passed round a corner in a corridor and bypassed another chokepoint fitted with some of the deadliest machine guns and small artillery she had ever seen, her jaw seemed to drop and hang there in space as she looked down upon the ARC. Before her was a vast cavernous like room with a curved ceiling which seemed to be constructed from the same type of material as a Battlestars armour. Solar lamps, ten foot in diameter hung from the apex of this ceiling every 50 feet and judging by how many she saw the vast room must have been five to six hundred foot long. Running along the length were thousands of crates and vast areas set aside for triage.

Seeing her look of surprise at the enormity of it all, the auxiliary who had been leading them through the ARC said "This is only the tip of the iceberg, your majesty".

"Its…how" for the first time in her life the Queen was lost for words at the enormity of it all.

"I don't really know the full details but while this may seem like a waste of space its perfect for a defence of the ARC. If you look up and to your right you will be able to see a number of balconies running the length of the boulevard, snipers and gunners will take up position there and we'll be able to have launchers towards the back of the boulevard".

"But isn't there a danger that the Cylons could overrun the defences here and use it as a beachhead".

"There is always a danger but all we have to do is delay the Cylons to allow the civilians to escape. We already know that if the Cylons do manage to get into the ARC the best we could ever hope to do is delay them. If you will follow me". The Corporal led them through the boulevard and onto a waiting lift which let them continue down to the hospital.

Before getting to the hospital the Queen asked "Corporal, tell me where did you put all the soil and rock from the construction of the ARC"

Looking at her and tapping his nose the Corporal replied "State secret ma'am".

The hospital was packed with civilians and soldiers when they entered with primarily corpsmen treating the wounded, seeing all of this the Queen realised just how much they would have their hands full.

**Battlestar Pegasus, 1 Hour Later**

"Admiral, our Raptors are starting to return" Shaw called out from her post, Admiral Hudson had recommended to his superior (Both are rear admirals and unless orders state otherwise the person with the earliest commission date is the head of the two) that the scout Raptors all return at the same time to maximise the Battlestars chances of escape in case the Raptors were followed by an overwhelming amount of enemy Basestars. "Admiral, we are missing two Raptors…they were sent to Leonis and Virgon".

Standing ramrod straight at her position at the information table, Admiral Cain ordered "XO Get those Raptors aboard right now, move the Arion and Pegasus 100km starward and have gunnery crews ready to fire. Well give the ten minutes. Any longer and we leave them".

Time seemed to slip away as they waited but no word came from the two Raptors until eventually they were forced to jump to their emergency coordinates orbiting the Gas Giant of Ragnar.

"Lieutenant Hoshi, open up a conference call to Arion Actual and Fisk, get me a new set of emergency jump coordinates".

The speakers crackled for a moment as the connection established before Hudson spoke "Arion Actual".

"Admiral, I suggest we start reviewing the Intel". Cain had Hoshi transfer over a copy of the gathered Intel ad she started to look through the files gathered.

Hudson exclaimed "Frak me" at the immensity of the situation, every Colony visited had been attacked and in some the battered husks of the Colonial fleet drifted in debris fields. Cain however didn't say anything as she looked through the images, her mind ordering the attack by what she was seeing.

Cain started to speak "Scorpia…Tauron…Picon. They were hit the hardest". It was obvious due to the fact that so many Colonial wrecks littered the space ways compared to how few Basestars there were, although these Basestars seemed to be of a newer design but the overall shape was at least similar to those in the first war. Each planets atmosphere was a thunderous, roiling ball of fire and highly irradiated dust. Nothing it seemed could survive the nuclear fires which waged across them.

"It's likely that these planets were hit by an overwhelming force, hundreds of ships at least combined with that backdoor virus. But…" Hudson was carefully analysing the data but the facts didn't lie "…it was an inside job Admiral. There's no other way that the Cylons could have implanted that backdoor into our systems".

"I would agree, but who would betray their own people like that". Cain continued "Caprica…" this was different Cain had to admit and then it started to make sense "The fleet must have learnt how to combat the Cylons. The Cylons must have kept a fleet in reserve behind their lines while the Caprican fleet was forced to attack the main force".

"Look at the Viper groupings near Caprica…" Cain saw what he meant even as Hudson continued "…the Fleet must have found the backdoor and were attempting to close it or were just ripping out the networks. Compare these images to Picon and you can see that only a few hundred Vipers were left drifting here compared to every one of them at Picon. The others were able to fight but were overwhelmed then look at the Battlestars and supporting ships dotting the planet. The Virus should have knocked them out but they were able to find some way around it and to continue to fight. Their positions also indicate that the Cylons must have attempted to surround the planet in order to bombard it which forced the fleet to break off into wolf packs in order to hit as many Basestars as possible".

"They failed…they were overwhelmed" Cain let out before adding as another piece of the battlefield caught her attention "Look at the Cylons reserve fleet. Nagala must have dispatched a BSG to strike at them".

"Three at least judging by the amount of destroyed Basestars".

"No just the one. They jumped in here…" Cain highlighted an area near the back of the scattered formation with a laser pen, this action highlighting the area in Hudson's data. "…and dived into the centre of the Cylons formation…hang on" Cain zoomed in onto a piece of wreckage which was spinning across the Battlefield "Kestrel".

"I didn't catch that Admiral" Hudson said over the wireless.

Powerful thoughts and emotions tore through Cain as she recognised the name of the Missilestar Kestrel. Her fists clenched, her knuckles white.

Her XO stood across from her saw what was happening and looking down on the highlighted wreckage knew what was happening but in front of everyone he could do nothing except look into her eyes and put across as much help as he could as he said "One missilestar, 113 Vipers. They made it away".

Looking at him, Cain nodded before she spoke "The missilestar Kestrel was destroyed here, however there isn't any other significant wreckage of another Colonial ship which means that Battlestar Group Sixteen managed to fight their way through and jump out. At the same time look at the flanks of the Cylon Fleet. These Basestars were hit by a nuclear and conventional salvo fired from their Raptors. You can still see some of the drifting missiles".

Moving on while hoping for the best for her son Cain continued "Gemenon, Libran, Sagittaron, Virgon, Aerilon, Canceron, Aquaria. The fleet must have been hit hard, most of the wrecks seem to indicate hit and run tactics".

"If I was Nagala with the fleet that was left I admit I would have been consolidating my forces and attempting to clear the backdoor as much as possible while sending out wolf packs to delay the Cylons as much as possible. But we have a question"

"Where is the rest of the fleet" Cain asked, "Admiral prepare for a jump to Leonis then one to Virgon. XO do the same".

**Battlestar Therion, CIC**

After almost two sleepless days of work it finally seemed like they just might get out of this mess alive they just needed more time. True, the majority of the systems were still offline due to damage sustained but they at least had three working generators with a fourth due to be complete within the next hour, the point defences were now 36% operational if they activated them, life-support was working in the inner sections of the ship, the ftl drives were spooled and while they were damaged they could still make maximum jumps of eighteen light-years and it was believed they could increase that to thirty light-years within the next couple of days and the antiship weapons which hadn't been destroyed were now operational but powered down so as to reduce their dradis signature. All in all their chances were a lot better now than they had been two days ago and with time they should be able to survive long enough to get to safety.

The ship was fine, but the crew weren't. The vast majority of the crew aboard the Battlestar Therion were in fact refugees from other destroyed ships drifting in the debris field. And of those hundreds of pilots rescued in the first twelve hours of the SAR missions, 82% of them were currently undergoing treatment for radiation sickness and it was expected that less than 40% would survive. Those rescued after the twelve hour mark had been lucky that they had packed emergency supplies of oxygen and unlucky in that they only had a few percent chance of survival since they had been exposed to the radiation plaguing the battleground for longer. Commander Burkett hated to even consider going down to the sick and dying lining the central hallways near CIC just yet, he'd heard the stories from his XO and he'd seen the images on the security cams and that was bad enough but to actually be there…he couldn't stomach it just yet, he was having to psych himself up to do it.

The alarm started beeping and the tactical officer shouted out "Multiple Dradis contacts. Its…" the tactical officer could barely speak for a moment before he looked at Burkett and said "…It's the Battlestars Pegasus and Arion".

"Arion" Burkett questioned, he'd never heard of such a Battlestar and he prided himself on knowing every current and past ship of the line.

"She's listed as being an experimental Battlestar out of the R&D wing commanded by Rear Admiral Hudson" the tactical officer said as he read the report that came up.

The XO said "Cylon Basestars are moving to engage them. They're outnumbered and won't last long".

The wireless operator spoke up saying "Commander I've got communication between Pegasus and Leonis…"

Burkett ignored the wireless operator as the tactical officer announced, multiple Raiders on approach to Pegasus starboard flank, radiological alarm! They're armed with nukes".

As all the information came at him, Burkett ordered "Battlestations set condition 1 throughout the ship and power up the whole damn thing. Hold on IFF" as soon as he uttered the orders more consoles started to light up as power was channelled into them. "Set intercept course to bring us in between Pegasus and those Raiders, then roll us and fire as soon as you have a targeting solution".

The severely damaged Battlestar stopped playing dead and manoeuvring thrusters activated stopping her spin while the engines pushed her forward and literally through the debris field. Her armour was still damaged in multiple places and there were still hull breaches but this wolf was going to war. Ramming her way through the debris she finally registered on the Colonial and Cylon DRADIS as an unknown powered vessel since Burkett had ordered the IFF to remain deactivated. It was obvious that the Cylons believed her to be a damaged Basestar simply because it looked like she was attacking the Pegasus rather than setting a course for the Cylon Basestars and so the Raiders maintained their course to the Pegasus. Unfortunately the Pegasus looked like she was turning herself to show her broadside to the Therion ready to fire her guns.

Burkett maintained course until they were just 4 seconds from effective firing range of Pegasus guns when he ordered "Activate IFF" the IFF powered up and revealed the ship as the Battlestar Therion to the Pegasus but Burkett knew that Cain would likely still shoot without confirmation and ordered "Open a channel to Pegasus Actual", before the channel even opened to remaining point defences on the Therion started firing at the oncoming Cylon Raiders and combining with the Pegasus Point defences to take them out.

"_Therion Actual this is Pegasus Actual. Is that you Burkett"_ Admiral Cain said over the wireless and through the loudspeaker.

Burkett smiled and said "That it is Admiral. You don't know how glad we are to see you. Admiral, we are barely holding together over here, we won't be able to hold the Cylons off for long and we have multiple survivors from the fleet on board". Despite the Cylon Raiders having launched what nukes and missiles they still had left at the ships, the combined point defences of both the Therion and the Pegasus seemed to be taking them out faster than they could be fired. But now the Cylon Basestars were coming into firing positions around the three ships.

"_Understood Commander. I want you to move the Therion between Pegasus and Arion, well provide you with whatever covering fire we can. Leonis Command, say again…"_ Cain continued as she was conducting two conversations at once.

Burkett looked at the navigator and ordered "You heard her, get us into position".

**Leonis**

**Luminaire**

**ARC-16, CIC**

For two days they had sent men and women out into the cities searching for survivors. For two days they had prepared their defences and now the Cylons were upon them. "DRADIS CONTACTS! Multiple Cylon Basestars detected in orbit. They're first war Baseships".

As soon as Montgomery saw the Basestars on the dradis he noted how they were holding position over 10000km away from the floating debris of Nagala's last stand, likely due to the ever present danger of missiles and ammunition exploding at random and the fact that even Montgomery's dradis had to be recalibrated in order to make sense of the debris field and so a lot of smaller debris was going unseen. The chances were that it was the same for the Cylons, especially with them using the original Basestars whose dradis arrays if they hadn't been upgraded would be even worse than the planet side dradis arrays of Leonis.

Turning to the colonel at the tactical console Montgomery ordered "Notify me as soon as they launch raiders and transports and have all fixed positions ready to combat any raiders launched as soon as they are in range". The Colonel acknowledged the order and proceeded to monitor the situation.

General Marx, second in command of ARC-16 approached Montgomery, a Tac-pad in his hands "Queen Alexandria's here. She currently at the Pilgrims hospital".

"Good, we might be able to deal with wounded still coming in" realising just how callous that sounded, Montgomery continued "And it's good that she survived, God knows the people are going to need her. Any word on Parliament"

"The PM is currently in 24, we've transferred the Deputy PM to 36 and split up the rest of Parliament likewise", Marx brought up the list detailing each MPs location and handed the Tac-pad to Montgomery. More than half of the MPs were listed as missing.

Montgomery had another look at the data coming in before saying "It might be best if I went to see her and let her know just what has happened" before he turned to leave.

"MULTIPLE DRADIS CONTACTS!" the DRADIS operator shouted out as he read the data coming in from the portable DRADIS arrays that had been set up on the planet's surface. These DRADIS arrays were powerful to say the least and were of a similar design to those on Nemea, this did however mean that they required more power, but it was ultimately worth it.

As Montgomery returned to the information table to look at the new DRADIS sightings he saw something that surprised him and was confirmed by the DRADIS operator "Two new contacts registering as the Battlestars Pegasus and the prototype Battlestar Arion 100 klicks from the outer edge of the battlefield".

Montgomery could hardly believe that these two Battlestars had survived the Cylon onslaught and for a minute he believed that it was because they were a Cylon trap. That was until one of his analysts brought him two files which had been quickly printed off. Inside was a brief report on each Battlestar and their commanding officers and it made sense to Monty that their commanders made it through. "Open a channel" he ordered as he put on a headset.

**Leonis orbit (same time)**

**Battlestars Pegasus and Arion**

Appearing over Leonis in an orbit over the Capital City Luminaire, Cain was momentarily shocked by what she saw. "Leonis…The fleet must have made their final stand here" she all but whispered as the external cameras revealed the drifting hulks of hundreds of warships, both Cylon and Colonial. What surprised Cain the most was the sheer number of destroyed Basestars compared to the amount of Colonial wrecks. Somehow the Colonial Fleet was able to hold off such overwhelming odds before they eventually succumbed to the Cylons numbers.

"MULTIPLE DRADIS CONTACTS!" Shaw called out "I'm reading 28 of the new Basestars and 32 of the first war variety on 182 Karom 227 the wreckage was blocking them Admiral".

"Set condition one and…"

"Incoming wireless…" Hoshi called out "Its…" Hoshi could barely believe what he was hearing "Its Leonis Command, Field Marshall Montgomery".

Cain could barely believe that the military had survived but she had to speak to them and find out what happened and to do that she needed time "Launch all Vipers and have Hudson do the same. Have Hudson take temporary battle command but tell him to delay action as much as possible, we can't hold off that many Basestars at once". Picking up her headset, Cain nodded to Hoshi to patch her through.

"Admiral Cain, is that you" the voice of Field Marshal Montgomery asked. The wireless was crackling a lot due to the nuclear fallout, something that Hoshi was attempting to compensate for by increasing the power to the wireless.

"It's me, General. What happened here".

"I'm sending you everything we have but you have to get out of here. The Colonies have fallen and if you stay you will surely fall. Listen carefully, the Cylons have the ability to look human now, it's how they were able to infiltrate our defences. We can hold out against the war to come and we believe we may be able to help the survivors on Virgon but our ultimate survival depends upon the fleet…"

"Admiral I have Therion Actual on the line" Hoshi called out.

"I've got them, they're coming out of the debris field on an intercept course" Kendra replied.

"_Therion Actual this is Pegasus Actual. Is that you Burkett"_ Admiral Cain said over the wireless surprised that any ship had managed to survive the battle.

Burkett smiled and said "That it is Admiral. You don't know how glad we are to see you. Admiral, we are barely holding together over here, we won't be able to hold the Cylons off for long and we have multiple survivors from the fleet on board". Cain smiled at the welcome news, it appeared that Burkett had been wise enough to search out for survivors while pretending to be just a drifting wreck.

"_Understood Commander. I want you to move the Therion between Pegasus and Arion, well provide you with whatever covering fire we can. Leonis Command, say again…" _the idea was to have the weakened Battlestar Therion protected from both sides by the superior firepower of the Pegasus and Arion, one of the only possible moves to save the ship, Cain knew that Hudson would be giving Therion the new jump coordinates.

Montgomery continued "Nagala placed Admiral Adama in command of the BSG16 and the remaining warships with orders to flee the colonies and protect a significant Civilian Fleet. You need to find them and you need to protect them at all costs. If we fall then they will be the only ones left to continue our civilisation. As ranking officer I am ordering you to protect them at all costs. Only when they are safe are you to come back and only if you have a game changer. Now go, get out of here now".

As the deck vibrated from the hundreds of guns firing their shells into the oncoming raider horde, Cain was caught between carrying out her orders and ramming every missile she had down the Cylons throats. But in the back of her mind was the possibility of her son still being alive with Battlestar group sixteen, she had to know he was safe. "Is there anything we can do to help you".

"Yes…" Montgomery replied "…by getting your arses out of here".

Montgomery stayed on the line as Cain ordered, "Recall all squadrons and prepare for immediate jump". Time slipped by as the point defences increased the pace of their fire and the Vipers and Raptors performed combat landings. Still, missiles continued to hit the fleet's ships in increasing numbers but eventually all the squadrons were in and Montgomery wished "Gods speed Admiral".

Cain answered "We will come back" before she ordered "Jump the fleet". A few seconds later and they winked out of existence.

**Battlestar Arion, same time**

As soon as Cain handed over command to him, Hudson was prepared and started dishing out orders "XO, launch half our vipers and have them take position between Pegasus and Therion. They are to hug the hulls and stay hidden until I give the order. Pegasus, I need you to launch your Vipers, engage the Cylons and pull back when I give the order. Helm raise us 200 metres and tactical prepare for long range cluster fire on the Cylon Raiders. Therion, use your point defences to take out anything that gets through. Im also sending you our emergency jump coordinates". The orders were quickly followed.

**Battlestar Arion, Port flightpod Alpha (upper flightpod)**

Accelerating down the tube, Colonel Lucy Sassy Hudson felt the thrill of battle descend over her. As senior CAG aboard Therion she had the job of coordinating the four squadrons being launched. Performing a 180 degree turn as soon as she exited the tube, she quickly adjusted her course and accelerated over the Arion while keeping to within 30 feet of the hull and then passing through the couple of kilometres of space between the Arion and Therion before covering the last four kilometres to bring her into the head of a large formation of Vipers and Raptors taking position within a hundred feet of Pegasus Hull.

There she waited as the rest of her pilots took position. It seemed like a lifetime passed before she understood what her brother was planning which was confirmed when Hudson came on the line "Sassy, Arion Actual. On my order split the squadrons up and down over the Pegasus and envelop the raiders".

"Roger that, Actual. Before she changed to squadron chatter and ordered " Crazy, Nat Sue take Yukon and Harrier squadron on my orders under Pegasus. Thorn and Knife squadrons are to follow me over".

A moment passed before Hudson ordered "All Squadrons now, now, now".

At that call Sassy accelerated upwards with her squadrons and Yukon and Harrier went down. Skimming over Pegasus which had cut its guns for this approach, Sassy saw the close in shapes of the retreating Pegasus Vipers being chased down by over four hundred sickle shaped Raiders. Raiders who were now outflanked in a pincer formation. Diving down into the formation the guns of every Viper Sassy had at her disposal tore into the tightly manoeuvring Raiders while Pegasus Vipers broke into two ranks which went left and right in order to further flank the Raiders. This was when Pegasus point defences had their moment tearing into the stalled Raider formation before the guns were again cut and repositioned as the Vipers were now mixing in with the Raiders. The battle lasted brief seconds before the last of the Raiders were cut down and Admiral Hudson was forced to give the return to home order long before the Basestars could get close enough to harm them.

**Leonis, ARC 16, Pilgrims Hospital**

**1 hour later**

Entering the hospital, Montgomery was momentarily shocked at the amount of wounded but this was something he had prepared himself for. What he hadn't prepared himself for were the stony, stoic faces of the wounded. They had all lost someone, the life that they had once known was gone and they were all now forced to face their own mortality head on as their lives became measured by surviving each day. Walking through the ward, he was forced to endure the sight of those volunteers who had stayed manning the defences even as the Nuclear Fires raced towards them. Few of those volunteers had survived and of those who survived they would be forever scarred by the memories of those they had lost. Tears were piercing his eyes as he passed them all. Rubbing them away he turned a corner of the ward and saw the person he had come to see, Queen Alexandria.

Despite her red rimmed eyes due to lack of sleep and her dishevelled and bloody appearance due to the aid she was providing to those under her care, she still struck Montgomery as one of the most beautiful and graceful people he had ever met, the last time being at a forces gala. Approaching her and bowing his head, Montgomery uttered "My Queen".

Turning towards him, a look of shock swept over Alexandria to quickly be replaced by happiness at seeing Montgomery alive and well "Field Marshal, you can dispense with the pleasantries. But it is good to see you".

Looking up at her, Montgomery quickly apologised "I'm sorry, I just thought that…you are still our Queen" before she could raise any argument, Montgomery rallied ahead "I actually came here to inform you of a couple of developments. You do of course know about the battle which took place in orbit"

"I do, my guard was able to set me up with a secure link".

Nodding, Montgomery continued "An hour ago, two more Battlestars jumped into orbit".

"Who How did they survive" Alexandria asked, clearly surprised that there were more surviving warships.

"The Battlestar Pegasus commanded by Rear Admiral Cain and a prototype Battlestar of the R&D fleet called the Arion and commanded by Rear Admiral Hudson. I don't know how they survived but fleet records state that the Battlestar Pegasus had been docked at the Scorpia Shipyards when the Cylons attacked. Cain must have performed a jump in order to get out in time. I'm not too sure about the Arion. They were undergoing a long range test and its possible however unlikely that the Cylons missed them. Either way they managed to get here". Montgomery could see the delight on her face as he continued "I successfully made contact with them and gave them all the Intel the fleet had gathered on the Cylons. You may also be happy to know that the Battlestar Therion which was part of Nagala's fleet and was believed to have been destroyed managed to join up with Admiral Cain. I overheard that they have been conducting search and rescue operations in the wreckage so hopefully they will have gotten as many as could be saved out of there. However despite having three Battlestars if they stayed here then they would have been overwhelmed so I ordered them to go after Adamas refugee fleet and protect them at all costs. I'm sorry but I had to, honour demanded it".

With a slumped head, Alexandria replied "No, you did the right thing. If they can survive with the fleet then they deserve that chance. But can we hold out alone".

"We have no choice. If your question is do we have the resources to do so then the answer would be that we can last at least ten years with what we have and hopefully longer if things are done right. However this plays out at least ten ARCs should be safe. They're off the grid, their locations known to only a handful of people, myself included and they are to take no part in this war if at all possible. If we fail to win and are destroyed then hopefully they will endure".

Snorting, Alexandria replied "We will endure. Let's make sure we do Field Marshal. I do however have one more question a Corporal I met earlier couldn't answer. How did you build the ARCs without anybody noticing the mined waste"

Smiling, Montgomery replied "Only the bravest of pilots. You went through a vast Atrium at the top of the ARC" it was a statement not a question so Monty continued "…we had pilots jumping freighters into and out of there filled with the mined rubbish. I'll tell you more later. For now…I just wanted to thank you for helping out here".

Looking him dead set in the eyes, Alexandria replied "They are my people, I am their Queen. I would be no place else when they need my help".

Montgomery nodded and saluted saying "Yes you are" before he turned and strode away and back to his work preparing for an imminent invasion.

**Leonis**

**Luminaire**

**ARC-16**

**Sector 8 Alpha**

As they were elevator doors opened the group of civilians were led down a passageway until they reached a conical part of the hallway with the thinnest part being where the lift entrance was. Essentially a killing zone. The Private leading them looked down at the folder in his hands before opening a door on his right and turning to them saying "This area is Sector 8 Alpha. You will each be granted a bunk in a dormitory similar to this one. 10 people to a dorm and space is at a premium. In the dorm you will find a set of lockers, one each containing a survival kit in case we have to evacuate. As soon as the legions and auxiliaries are back you will all be trained and a member of the legion or the auxiliaries will be bunking with you. If you will follow me".

As the civilians followed him down the hall, each one undergoing a culture shock as they looked in on the dorms and really saw that space was at a premium compared to the lives they had lived just 24 hours before they came to another set of doors distinctive in the lime green paint on them. "The bathrooms or heads as you might become accustomed to calling them, the one on the left for women, the one on the right for men. You will each take two showers a day lasting five minutes each. We are living in confined condition, we cant risk illnesses spreading. Every month you will each be given soap, toothpaste and a toothbrush. You need to make it last because you will only get one each. If you lose it we will not give you a replacement. We will also be providing you with a bathroom rota".

Turning the Private continued further down the hall before stopping again at what appeared to be a large communal area. Filled with seated booths like at a café and TV monitors on the walls with directional speakers above the tables. In the back of the room was a shuttered area with a stainless steel finish. "This is a combined communal area and mess. Three rationed meals a day will be provided. Those with special dietary requirements for medical reasons only will be separated over the coming week so as to be placed with those like them. Your rations will eventually be supplemented with fresh food that you grow in the troughs that run down the sides of the corridors behind you. The lighting has UV properties to both help with the growing of food and help with your own health. If your crops fail then you are on basic rations. You will also see the TV monitors. Each booth has one and a directional speaker above it, move away from the booth and the you will not hear the TV. 20 Television Channels will be starting up over the coming month. They will be showing pre recorded programs and movies as well as news about how the war is progressing and will each cater to a different person. A library service is also available, details are in folders in your lockers. At the back of this room is a hatch. This hatch is an emergency exit which will bring you out into an access corridor into a security checkpoint in another part of the facility. This door is monitored at all times and if you attempt to use it without authorisation then you will be punished. It is only to be used in case of evacuation. If we have to evacuate then you will travel through this corridor with your survival packs and will be given weapons and emergency supplies and led out of the ARC to the nearest safe zone.

"You will all be given a job, children will go to schools, a government will still run, an economy will develop and we will attempt to keep families together. We have three punishments depending on the crime committed. The first and lightest punishment is reduced rations and use of facilities. The second is hard labour, solitary confinement or you will be placed on the front lines for no longer than one year. These two punishments can be lessened, the last cannot. The third punishment is execution. Murderers, rapists and traitors will be executed as soon as a guilty verdict has been received. This entire section of the ARC is covered with security cameras which are there for your safety. Even the bathrooms are covered although these cameras will be monitored by a sexually appropriate person. You wont like it but it is entirely for your safety and the continued survival of our people. You will also undergo bi-monthly check-ups with a doctor so that we can stamp out on diseases.

"I wont lie to you. For the next month or so the psychologists who helped to design the ARCs predict that you will feel like a prisoner but that will pass. Eventually this place will feel like a home to you, eventually you will come to understand why your freedoms are being restricted now. It is so that in the future when we win this war, you will be alive to see those freedoms restored in full. The government, the military…I swore an oath to protect the people of Leonis from all enemies. I swear to you now that with your help we will protect you but only if we work together".

**ARC16**

**Sector 8 Control Room**

While the technology and software in the ARCs were dated and could be seen as basic compared with modern technologies mainly for their resilience and low maintenance costs, some technology and software was so dated that it was created before the first war at a time when Colonial technological development exceeded modern day technology. Part of that software was running right now. While a controller, basically an auxiliary from the intelligence arm of the armed forces watched the security images of Sector 8 this software was doing its own monitoring of the video footage and cross referencing it with the latest intel. Most of this intel came from the ARCs copies of the colonial mainframe while the rest came from the Colonial fleet and the assets across Leonis including other ARCs sent through hardline connections.

This software was highly illegal because of how easily it could be hacked when it was part of a network which it needed to be in order to do its job, but this software had been brought out of secure storage and was set to work because of what the Colonial Fleet had learnt. Cylons now had the ability to look human.

This software was facial recognition software and was carefully cross referencing each face it came across with the intel it had available. This software would be the one thing that ensured the Leonosians could level the playing field and right now it had set an alarm beeping. It had found something.

Moving towards the computer as soon as the beeping started, the auxiliary quickly checked the face of the elderly man currently in Sector 8 Alpha with the images on file, images captured in ARCs 17 and 32. Grabbing the phone from the desk he dialled 2 and his superior in the CIC answered "CIC intel".

"Private Connor, Sector 8 security. We have a breach. 1 elderly male likely a Cylon infiltrator in Sector 8 Alpha also spotted in ARCS 17 and 32. Sending file now". Clicking a few buttons on the keyboard the file was immediately forwarded to the head of the intelligence wing who looked it over before saying "Good work. Security is on its way now and I will make sure you get double rations for this".

"Thankyou, sir but it was the software which found him" before he heard the click of his superior putting the phone down.

Moving back to his seat monitoring the monitors his guard came back into the room from the adjoining toilet asking "Whats happening"

Smiling, the analyst replied "Watch 8 Alpha". On the monitors displaying that area 10 fully armed legionaries exited the elevator and walked down towards the communal eating area and the civilians gathered there. The soldiers only had one target. As they neared, the lead legionary raised a rifle which seemed old fashioned and quickly fired a dart into the neck of the elderly man while the rest rushed the last ten feet and slammed the disorientated man into the floor. The civilians were ordered by the last two soldiers to step back and line up at the far side of the room under threat of being shot, needless to say they quickly complied while the now unconscious elderly man was cuffed and placed on a stretcher before being taken away for questioning. One legionary remained behind once the others had taken the unconscious man away in order to tell the civilians that they had captured a suspected Cylon infiltrator based on verified intel and that they were now safe and could return to orientation before he too left.

By the end of the day across all the ARCS, 141 Cylon infiltrators of seven distinct models were sedated and captured without killing them. This software, despite being illegal had proven its worth. If only they could contact the Colonial Fleet with this intel, just how many lives could be saved.

**Hope you liked this chapter and my introductions of the three beasts which will have their own story from now on covering their chase after the fleet and their employment of guerrilla tactics. Rear Admirals Hudson and Cain share the same rank but in this case Cain is the superior because she was commissioned first.**

**The Battlestar Therion and Ghost Squadron are taken from the BSG ghosts comic series and Id like to thank Just a Crazy Man for introducing them to me.**

**The Battlestar Arion and its attendant crew and family is an idea that reviewerdwj has been bouncing with me. Arion also escaped the Cylons search for it because they jumped to the wrong place.**

**The exploits of these three Battlestars will be seen soon in a new story called The Three Beasts.**

**I wanted to show that sometimes old technology is better especially with the pre Cylon tech that the ARCs employ in small numbers with the photo recognition software and while it may seem too advanced you have to remember in Caprica 58 years before the fall, Colonial technology was about ten years ahead of what we can do and 10 years behind in other areas.**

**The next chapter will see the start of the invasion and will be called Raging Thunder.**

**Well I hope you liked the chapter and reviews are appreciated and I also apologise once again if my grammar is lacking with a lack of question marks and apostrophes since those buttons have stopped working on my laptop and I've had to copy and paste the ones that are there.**


	3. Chapter 3: Raging Thunder

**Chapter 3: Raging Thunder**

**The Shape Of Things To Come **

"**Have the Legions already out there prepare themselves and ready the defences, the invasion is about to begin. Operation Raging Thunder is a go…"**

**It was hoped that Raging Thunder would allow them not to stop an invasion of Leonis but instead to control it…**

**Raging thunder could do this not with one tremendous move but a series of small and large moves**

"**Ten transports are heading for Terragus, 10 for Eastwich, 12 for Pollonus, 5 for Hemlington, 10 For the Peragus plains and the remaining 18 are heading for Luminaire".**

**Standing there he felt the landing struts hit the ground before compressing as they took on the weight of the transport as she settled and he could barely feel the vibration as the other four transports touched down as well. Victory is ours, he thought.**

"…**We shall defend our planet, whatever the cost may be. We shall force the Cylons onto our planet and we shall fight on the landing grounds…" – Field Marshall Montgomery during the Cylon Bombardment.**

**3 days after Cylon Bombardment, 7 hours after departure of Battlestar Pegasus fleet**

**Leonis**

**Luminaire**

**Central Business District**

"Back it up slowly" Major Natalie Ford ordered through her throat mic to the tank driver. Inch by solid inch the fifty odd ton heavily armoured Rhino class tank was reversed into a formerly glass covered clothing store. The solid roar of its R60 multi-fuel 2 stroke engine with its 3600 rampant horses like the guttural roar of the wildest of beasts seemed to comfort the Legionary. It was apparent that the tank was just barely squeezing in due to the few light fixtures that had remained being knocked from their mountings by the 190mm main armament. "Slow, slow" Ford ordered as she stood towards the rear of the tank watching it cover the last four feet until she finally ordered "Halt…youre there even if you do drive worse than my grandma. Alright let's get you covered".

Her squad quickly started moving the debris and stock they had cleared from the store and onto the street back into the store only this time stacked a foot in front of the tank. This was only the second line of cover. In the background over the heavy equipment being used by over a thousand squads throughout the city could be heard the chug, chug, chug of a farming tractor driven by Jammer moving towards them and then you had the harsh scrape of its scoop as it was pushed along the road building up a wall of rubble. As he neared the kerb he raised the scoop a couple of inches to clear it further pushing the mounted rubble forward until he finally reached the front of the store and stopped before reversing again to repeat the process further along. After two minutes of this all that was left behind was a large wall of rubble banked just inside the shop front making it look like the ceiling had collapsed. That and the debris free lines of road that the rest of the squad were quickly trying to cover by sweeping rubble into its place until after a minute you would never suspect that a tank was within this former shop its main armament pointing towards Keera Park and its burnt trees and large fields.

**Western Luminaire city limits**

**ARC-43**

West of Luminaire were the first of many farms which dotted Leonis. It was a common misconception among the colonists that had never visited Leonis or seen the documentaries on this planet that it was all just rolling fields for hundreds of miles. The Planes of Leonis they call it. In fact a quarter of those planes were in fact vast pastures dozens of miles wide where Cattle and livestock could roam free and some of the most fertile farms and vineyards on any planet. Roughly twenty percent of these farms were owned and operated by the Leonis government with military and former military personnel working with the farmers. Roughly sixty percent of Leonis landmasses were relatively flat due largely to the increased mass of Leonis generating a gravity of 1.6g (1.6 times the size of Kobol and Caprica).

The idea was a simple one which came about more than forty years before. In order for the military to remain as large as it was, costs had to be cut and one of the best ways of cutting this budget was for the military to produce their own food. Some of this food was traded, especially the wine produced at the vineyards which while not the best quality on Leonis (Leonis was well known as having the best vineyards in the twelve colonies thanks to its calmer climate which was due to its stable axis) was a good, cheap alternative sold to the masses. Also because the military and former military (20% of all profits went to the Colonial Heroes charity) ran the farms costs could be kept down, a solid sense of pride could be established, the units learnt how to work as one especially during the harvest and they would learn the lay of the surrounding land while also learning how to construct fortified locations in the surrounding land and dig new irrigation ditches. It was a good life whenever your posting brought your unit to one of these farms and it helped to reaffirm the locals belief in the solidarity of the Legions being the peoples army. But all that had changed.

Time was slipping away as the soldiers of the 18th Legion which had been posted to this area were struggling to fully evacuate everything they would need. Land Rangers (vehicles similar to Land Rovers) were carefully corralling a herd of cows towards a large trailer, it's entrance already open. Barriers had been set up in order to funnel the cows onto it but the problem was these cows roamed a pasture 2 miles wide. Thankfully though with the twelve Land Rangers working as one the cows were steadily moved forward and onto the trailer before the doors were quickly slammed shut and the driver got the green light. In other farms sheep were corralled in a similar way only this time by dozens of sheepdogs, legionaries and farmers. Similar ways were being used with pigs and poultry.

The idea was that the ARCs would need to be as self-sufficient as possible and in order to do so they would need the produce and protein that an animal can provide with the manure being prized for its fertilising qualities. Hundreds of trailers were driven to each ARC from the various farms and their livestock was led into massive underground hanger-like spaces where dried straw and hay was provided and an calming sound was playing through the speakers courtesy of the governments animal psychologists. Even while a census was being compiled, vets were being highlighted and drawn away at least temporarily from the population to be brought to these hangers so as to fully care for the livestock and check them for radiation poisoning. The majority of the cows would likely be culled first since they required a larger amount of feed for a smaller return but the pigs and poultry were almost worth their weight in gold.

**Luminaire**

**Beneath Dragonville Industrial Zone **

**ARC-16 **

**CIC**

"Well it looks like we got lucky" General Marx mentioned to Field Marshal Montgomery as they looked at the data provided by The Leonosian Intelligence Agency (LIA). "We've done a DNA comparison to be sure but apart from what I have been told are minor, cosmetic differences in the DNA, black hair instead of blonde for instance, there are seven distinct models of Cylons. To be honest they had spread themselves that far apart that we may never have gotten to them before they acted if it wasn't for Vergis' Facial Recognition Software. As it is we have captured a total of 217 skinjobs as of 0800 and our outer security markers are focusing on these faces. It's the same with the other ARCs…"

"The intel package that the Graystones sent…" Montgomery began before Marx interrupted.

"Don't you mean the group claiming to be the Graystones?"

"No, they were definitely the Graystones. I don't know of anyone else who could have done what they did. Anyway, the intel advised that the Cylons likely have a way of transferring their minds to another body when they die which does pose a bit of a problem for us".

Nodding Marx said "If they die then they can reveal our location, how deep we are and preliminary defences. We need to keep them alive, but what's to stop them committing suicide?"

"Us" Montgomery answered "We can place them into a chemically induced coma or any other number of drug induced states. We do however need to interrogate them, any informa…"

"Dradis contacts! Reading 20 more Cylon troop landers. They're moving to link up with those already in orbit" the tactical officer called out.

Taking a hot gulp of coffee from his mug, Montgomery moved to the central information table looking upon the patchy DRADIS views getting an eye for the Cylons positioning and movements. The movements were carefully coordinated causing Montgomery to call out "The Search and Rescue is over people. Have the Legions already out there prepare themselves and ready the defences, the invasion is about to begin. Operation Raging Thunder is a go".

Folders were quickly handed out each with a bold black line running around the edges and with a black seal of the colonies. In Bold black lettering read "BLACK REPORT. UNAUTHORISED READING IS SUBJECT TO THE DEATH PENALTY. OPERATION RAGING THUNDER" and then a code to decide who should be reading the contents, A1 for the mission controller, B3 for the tactical staff etc.

Out of all the well thought out contingency plans Raging Thunder was one of the best for the situation they now found themselves in and it was hoped that Raging Thunder would allow them not to stop an invasion of Leonis but instead to control it. Granted that was extremely difficult without adequate air and orbital support but it could in theory be done if you had overwhelming firepower on the ground and were ready to cede areas of your own territory so that you could better protect the rest. Most of all though, if you could make the enemy feel fear by taking out the beachhead or significantly depleting it while losing as few of your own people and assets as possible then you could determine the course the war would take. Raging thunder could do this not with one tremendous move but a series of small and large moves beginning with the anti-air batteries and point defences which had been set up all over the city. Montgomery was proud of the ideas thrown together to make Raging Thunder a viable option and so he should be, he was one of the people who had formulated the plan.

The Dradis operator started calling out the Cylons positioning data as the 65 first war troop landers started to break up into 5 distinctive groups. Each of these transports could hold 20,000 Cylons thanks to them not needing life-support and had the internal mass of a marinestar while still having the distinctive Cylon Basestar shape. In addition to the Cylons they also held up to fifty 30 foot high tanks and the supplies that they would need to construct an on world base of operations, have ample ammunition for both the first and second wave and anti-air batteries to secure their positioning. "Ten are heading for Terragus, 10 for Eastwich, 12 for Pollonus, 5 for Hemlington, 10 For the Peragus plains and the remaining 18 are heading for Luminaire".

"Transfer command of the territories targeted to the senior Generals in the vicinities. What's the ETA on those heading for us?"

"12 Minutes sir. The Cylons are also dispatching a squadron of raiders with each transport and 4 full squadrons of heavy Raiders are flying ahead of each transport and if they maintain their present speed will be on us within 7 minutes. There's also 10 full squadrons of Raiders heading for our territory, eta is 4 minutes".

"Have all men still out in the field take cover when they are in range, and all batteries are to remain hidden and are not to respond to the raider threat until I give the order" Montgomery ordered as he watched the positioning of the Cylons ships and saw on the Dradis how the attacking Raiders seemed to disappear as they entered the atmosphere and the heat building up around their hulls, plasma really, seemed to block the Dradis.

"What if those Raiders are on a bombing run?" General Marx asked his superior as he worried about letting the Raiders getting in too close.

"They are, but we don't want them to see what our defences are like until it is too late. If they can't see our defences then they will just blanket bomb the areas near where they will land".

"You can't know that" Marx said.

"I can. It's the logical step. Secure your landing ground before you land with both a bombing run on the surrounding areas before landing your forlorn hope in order to delay our troops and you have a greater chance of more of your troops surviving and I need to know for definite where they are going to land. The problem is though, what if they bluff. There is at least one conciliation; I don't believe they are going to nuke us"

"Why they've already done it the once?"

"Because if they were going to nuke us again then they would have already done it over the past three days when we weren't ready. They have to know that we are ready now".

"2 minutes to contact with the Raiders" the DRADIS operator called out "More transports arriving in orbit. I'm reading a further 7. They're maintaining position with the Basestars". Undoubtedly the second wave would be ready by the end of the day.

Behind Montgomery, his staff were busy relaying orders to the personnel still out in the field.

**Luminaire**

**8****th**** Avenue passing by Acheron Memorial Park**

**Raven (L21C1)018 en route to Linthorpe (district at eastern edge of Luminaire)**

Flying at barely 30 foot off the ground and travelling at speeds in excess of 150mph the tried and tested VTOL tore down 8th Avenue racing against time to get its occupants to Linthorpe (a district of Luminaire). At such speeds and as low to the ground as it was while travelling between more than 10 storey high buildings was dangerous to say the least. Just one wrong flick from the pilot on the controls or one dangerous updraft and they could plough into the side of a building, but they had no choice and neither did the other Ravens rushing throughout the city. The Cylon Raiders were just over 3 minutes away from the city and the passengers needed to be in position and the Ravens hidden from view.

Looking out from the hatches window, Major Natalie Ford watched the world pass her by, watched as those legionaries and auxiliaries below them rushed to their assigned positions or covered their defences with a grey material which was designed to be obscured to the first war Cylons roving red eye and was hoped would work with the modern day Cylons. The roar of the engines would have been deafening if it weren't for the ear pieces she wore. Behind her Pauli and Jammer were loading up a couple of bags with the heavy weapons they would need while Sam was double checking his own weapons to make sure there wasn't anything that could jam which was unlikely due to how well made they were but was always wise, the last thing you needed was for one round to get jammed in the barrel and the second to slam into it which could blow your own head off. Three other squads from their century were going through similar experiences all the while their stomachs were churning as they readied themselves for battle. Lighting a cigarette and withdrawing the nerve reducing smoke in a deep breath, Natalie felt it tingle its way down her throat. Turning her head to Sam, "Hand me a pack of ammo".

Sam grabbed a pack labelled "5.56mm. 10x30" from his under seat storage locker and handed it to Natalie. Clipping the small bag to the side of her backpack, Natalie made sure she could easily reach back into the satchel while also retaining as much movement as possible before she reached onto a storage rack on the back wall of the Raptor and pulled down a Primus 12 heavy sniper rifle with an attached wind and range scale and an attached satchel of five 20 round clips which she clipped onto the other side of her backpack and slipped the rifle crossways over her shoulder before getting a grip on her standard assault rifle which was hanging on a sling attached to her flak jacket. Seeing her, Simon the leader of her centuries 8th squad and the second in her Pincer (breakdown of a legion is at the end of Chapter One) asked "Are you sure you have a big enough load out?"

With barely a smile, Natalie replied "If we get bogged down I intend on staying alive".

"Ten seconds and we are there. 2 minutes 30 until Raiders are in range" Ruskie, the co-pilot called back "Bligh's already on the ground".

Grabbing a tight hold of the overhead webbing, Natalie was ready for the sudden deceleration as the VTOL jets faced in the opposite direction at full blast before they repositioned to turn the Raven and bring it down into a large alley. Pulling the hatch open Natalie was the first on the ground with her squad and the rest of the squads jumping down just behind her. A shadow passed overhead as a waiting auxiliary in one of the upper windows of the building on her right through a grey tarpaulin over the top of the Raven, legionaries quickly moved to each corner as it settled and grabbing hold pulled it to cover the transport while being careful to ensure it only touched the cooler ceramic coating of the VTOL jets rather than the much hotter it would burn metal. Natalie was already moving by the time it was fully secured.

Approaching her at a jog, Colonel Bligh her commanding officer ordered "Ford, Simon, get your teams over to that building…" he pointed behind himself and continued "9th floor east side windows, take your meds and await my orders". Bligh ran over to the other two squads ordering them to another building before waiting for another Raven to come and land in the alley.

The two squads raced towards the building in question, Natalie sliding over the bonnet of a car which had either been ploughed into the side of the road by their roadplough armed APC convoys or the less unlikely bad parking of their owners and ran over the gravelly road to the other side. White flakes like snow were starting to flutter down around them as they covered the distance, likely radioactive ash from the fallout. Running into the lobby of the building they bounded through the door blocking the stairs and ran up the flights. Before they were even three quarters of the way up, Pauli called out "The Raiders should be onto the city by now". If it weren't for how fit they were they would have been out of breath by the time they reached the door leading to the 9th floor offices.

Barging through, the two teams ran down the Corridor towards the East side of the building breaking into two teams when they got there so as to cover more windows. Moving past the dozens of desks and their frazzled, dead computers with their minutiae photos, coffee cups and folders, Natalie and her squad reached the windows which had somehow mostly managed to survive the shockwaves of the bombardment. Smashing one open with the butt of her assault rifle, Natalie left the vertical cloth blinds hanging and made sure her sightline was good before sitting back down at the wall next to the window. "You heard Bligh, top up on your meds" she ordered as she got her own anti-rad injection out of the steel case and injected herself. Replacing the spent needle back in her case and covering it with a red sticker so that she knew not to use it, she put the case back in her pouch.

Standing she moved to a desk and pushing the computer and the rest of the rubbish off it she pulled it over to the waist high window and crouched down behind it while pulling her newly acquired Primus sniper rifle from behind her back and extended the legs before settling it on the desk so that she and the rifle were obscured by the blinds from those outside.

Awaiting her orders, Natalie heard felt the distant rumble of the Raiders bombing the areas surrounding what were going to be their landing grounds. Jammer asked "Do you think they spotted our assets?"

Shaking her head, Natalie replied "Maybe, but I doubt it. They're probably just bombing where they think we will be". A distant drone of a group of Raiders answered Natalie as they increased in volume.

Jammer in his nervous way asked "Why aren't our guns firing?"

"They've been ordered not to" Natalie reasoned "The Cylons must want to know their location which is why they sent these Raiders ahead. Now quieten down. Looking through a gap between the blinds Natalie saw the obvious outline of a legionary in a south facing window down the street and noticed the barrel of his rifle sticking out of the window making him a target for the approaching Raiders. Opening the shutter on her scope, Natalie centred the sight on the inside edge of the wall next to the Legionaries head before flicking on the red dot sight and moving it back and forth before finally having to shine it in his left eye to get his attention. The rifle quickly moved back inside as did the Legionary as he got the message and hid from view. Clicking off the red dot, Natalie felt the table shudder and saw the blinds flutter as the Raiders tore by heading further east.

Watching them, Natalie saw as their bay doors opened and 10 missiles apiece were fired out and towards the ground in front of them before the Raiders pulled into a tight climb. Natalie could just barely make out the missiles as their thrusters fired and they accelerated forward while branching out. Looking through her scope allowed her to see right down the 3 mile long road and to the distant Rose Hall Parade Grounds, a vast 4 square mile stretch of Tarmac and an already destroyed fleet barracks. The majority of the missiles hit the ground up to four blocks before the Parade grounds, some released an immense shockwave while the others released a vast stretch of Napalm-like fire which tore through the mostly residential blocks which were struggling to stay standing against the shockwave. The shockwave took precious seconds before it finally hit them, dust and ceiling tiles fell and Natalie could make out the crashes of cups and Computers as they were rocked off the desks. The remaining airborne missiles slammed into the already destroyed Barracks reducing it to nothing more than a vast rubble strewn mound. The Raiders banked and started to patrol the destroyed four block radius doing scans for movement. Thankfully no one had died yet.

Minutes ticked by before she heard the louder engines of the Heavy Raiders closing in before she saw them come into view heading for the area which had just been bombed. There must have been over a hundred maybe even a hundred and fifty she reasoned as they broke into two groups. The largest heavy raider formation landed just at the outer edge of the four blocks which had just been sterilised while the smaller group of only twenty heavy raiders landed on the smoky red Parade Grounds themselves. The rear hatches on all of them opened and the tightly packed Centurions were deployed. Natalie detested how Daniel Graystone had named the Cylon combat models Centurions mainly because it spat in the face of the rank of Centurion within the Legion. Decades ago there had been a court battle over the use of the name but the name had stuck and ever since had caused confusion. You might ask why the Leonis military didn't rename their rank but why should they when the Legions in one form or another had existed for thousands of years, long before the exodus from Kobol.

The Centurions started to spread out searching for any Leonosian combatants and further securing the landing grounds for the incoming landing craft.

**ARC-16**

**CIC**

Montgomery had watched on the DRADIS and the footage taken by the few security cameras they had managed to set up after the initial bombardment as the Cylon Raiders had made their intentions clear and attacked the areas around their intended landing grounds. Most of these areas had already been suspected of being used while others hadn't but support was nearby all of them. He watched as the Raiders continued to patrol their assigned areas as the actual invasion force neared to one minute away.

General Marx tried to casually take a cigarette out of a silver plated tin his wife had gotten him on their tenth anniversary while willing his hand not to shake. He held the still open tin out to Montgomery who in turn took one out. Marx couldn't help but note just how calm his commander looked in the face of attack. Montgomery lit his with his solid forces lighter which had survived the past 46 years and held out the open flame to Marx before putting it away.

"30 seconds on closest transports. Two minutes on furthest" the Dradis operator called out.

"The Legions are standing ready and I have ground units covertly moving to cover those areas not accounted for" Colonel Regis called out.

"Now?" Marx asked Montgomery, wondering if they should open up with their defences.

Carefully looking at the DRADIS overlay on the tactical map, Montgomery replied "Not yet" before he flicked some ash into a metal ashtray.

"Five Transports are moving to land at the Rose Hall Parade grounds. One at Regents Park. One at the Acheron Memorial Park…Two at Queen Tamara II Spaceport, four at the Northgate Spaceport, two at the Romulus fleet landing grounds…One at the Jupiter Stadium, and two at the Silverwood Memorial Park".

Montgomery waited, they only had one shot at this.

**Rose Hall Parade Grounds**

**Lead Cylon Transport**

Standing on one of the only areas of the ship with life-support, the CIC, William Doral, the Cylon in charge of the invasion of Luminaire watched on the antiquated monitors as the transports closed on their landing grounds. As expected their Raiders earlier bombardment of the surrounding areas of each landing ground followed by the deployment of the Centurions aboard the Heavy Raiders had been enough to quell any resistance before it appeared and now they were free to land without trouble in order to disgorge the awaiting Centurions and the Heavy Armour. So old was this ship that it didn't even have a mnemonic palm interface or even a Hybrid which meant that the Piloting was done by a two. But at least the transport flew and they had air cover.

But, he thought, we shouldn't even have to be amassing this invasion if the others had done their jobs properly and actually infiltrated everywhere they needed to infiltrate. If they had then they would know of the defences that Leonis military had set up years in advance and they could have dealt with them. Pondering that thought, he wondered if maybe Montgomery was lying and the worst they would have to face is a handful of Legions when they took the city and then the planet because surely if they had what they said they had we would be being attacked right now. They can't have, he reasoned although they did a pretty good job of clearing the roads as he thought on the pictures the Raiders had relayed back.

Standing there he felt the landing struts hit the ground before compressing as they took on the weight of the transport as she settled and he could barely feel the vibration as the other four transports touched down as well. Victory is ours, he thought.

**Linthorpe**

**Major Natalie Ford**

Natalie didn't need her scope as she watched the transports touch down. The vast star shaped vessels stood out like a saw thumb against the city. Burning black smoke from the Napalm-like missile strikes were wafting into the air though and so were slightly obscuring her view but the constant back and forth flights of the numerous Raiders were counteracting against the heated smokes rise and tearing it apart. As she watched, Natalie heard Jammers trembling voice state "We can't take that many on".

Natalie was about to say something when her radio activated "All units take cover" it was Colonel Bligh's voice. The four legionaries immediately moved so that they were blocked by the eastward facing wall.

**ARC-16**

**CIC**

"The Rose Hall transports and the Silverwood transports are starting to deploy their Centurions. Same model as the fleet faced" Colonel Regis informed Montgomery.

"All global transports are in position" the DRADIS operator called out.

Montgomery waited another ten seconds as every eye in the room seemed to look at him before he was ready. His heart had accelerated and his hands were freezing cold, the cigarette with a trail of ash hanging off of it. Looking Colonel Regis dead in the eye, Montgomery in a strong voice spoke just one simple word "Now!"

Flipping a master switch on a console next to him a signal went out globally to almost all of the sites the Cylons had chosen.

**Rose Hall Parade Grounds**

**Target Codename AP-3**

At the centre of a cold, dark hemispherical chamber 10 metres in diameter sat a large metal device. Trailing away from the device and towards a socket in the wall was a copper cable through which a signal was being conducted until it reached the device. On the faceplate of the device a previously amber LED turned red and the Parking Warden was no more.

**Rose Hall Parade Grounds**

It happened in an instant, a scene which was playing out at that very moment across the planet. The Cylons felt safe in their deployment, they weren't being attacked, they had defeated any form of organised effort which had the possibility to derail their plans and soon they would have their beachhead set up. So sure were they of their victory. You can never be sure in war.

Within less than a second the rapture seemed to come about as the 9 parking wardens which had been set up just hours after the initial Cylon Bombardment released their pent up energies like a volcano suddenly bursting to life. The solid parade ground erupted towards the sky in a cataclysmic explosion tearing through and around the Cylon Landing Ships while the nuclear fires of these Parking Wardens melted through the now torn apart hulls of the invasion force, dissolving any chance of the invasion coming from here or anything surviving the blasts. Raiders which were too close were wiped from existence, and those that looked like they might be safe were speared by the volatile chunks of tarmac which had been erupted from the blast zone. And the shockwave…

**Linthorpe**

**Major Natalie Ford**

The shockwave which seemed to result from the detonation of the parking wardens was enough to throw Natalie and her squad to the ground despite being miles away. They all crawled underneath the desks for cover. It was as if a powerful Kobolquake (Earthquake) was shaking the building like a baby shakes a rattle. Ceiling tiles, computers, desks, shelves, everything was shaken loose to crash to the ground. Windows shattered as if they were the shells from a shotgun, walls cracked threatening to topple the building. And the noise…there was a reason that this operation was called Raging Thunder. You literally could not hear yourself even if you shouted, it was like you were in the strongest thunderstorm to ever exist and even as the gods almighty blasts tore by it was like you could hear the patter of a rainstorm against a canvass tent as the distant chunks of debris catapulted out of the ground of the Parade Grounds crashed to the ground like thousands of small meteors. It seemed to last forever before it died down.

**ARC-16**

**CIC**

Despite being miles from the nearest parking wardens, Montgomery felt the tremors of each one pass through the ARC wiping 16 of the 18 transports from existence. You could actually feel each explosion as those furthest away took the longest time to arrive. His face didn't smile but his eyes did as he considered just how many thousands of centurions had been wiped from existence thanks to the Parking Wardens.

The first act of Raging Thunder was the denial of all spaceports and territory within the cities which would allow the Cylons to deploy a sizeable army within the borders of the city. Allow them to land outside the city limits, yes, but not inside. The second act was completed with the first which was to strike one solid blow against the Cylons in order to make them question their next actions and to remove as many Cylons from existence with as little effort as possible. The third act which was about to start was to deny the Cylons airborne support and already there were plenty of Raiders and heavy Raiders hanging around over the cities.

**Leonis Orbit**

**Cylon invasion Fleet**

"Multiple nuclear detonations detected across the planet" a Three called out.

A Six looked up at the other Cylons with a clear sense of shock over her face as she announced "56 of the 65 transports have been destroyed. The Colonials detonated a number of nuclear devices beneath the landing grounds. They were weak enough to have a small area of effect but strong enough to totally destroy everything within that area". All the models in the room were shocked by the numbers, at most they had expected to lose up to thirty percent of their landing forces but this…this was the very worst possible outcome.

"Our Raiders are taking fire" a four called out.

**Luminaire**

**Linthorpe**

"Alright, that's us. Let's get these guns uncovered and take down those Cylon frackers" the gunnery chief called out to his men as he stood in the stairwell of the apartment block. Opening the metal door, Chief Lewis and the men assigned to him ran towards the covered anti-aircraft battery. Lewis wasn't a Legionary or even an auxiliary but was in fact a 38 year old father of two. He was a Colonial Fleet gunnery Chief who had been on leave from the Battlestar Chimera when the Cylons attacked. Shortly after arriving at ARC-16 he had volunteered himself and had been assigned to command one of the thousands of anti-air batteries which were being set up right across every city on Leonis.

Dragging the grey tarpaulin cover which was called an Opus Blanket after the lead scientist who had designed the material, he started calling out orders to his men to properly load the guns, remove the safeties and select a target and then he waited the order to fire.

"All batteries, fire at will" came over the wireless. Making sure his ear and eye protectors were properly in place he slapped the lead gunner on the shoulder as he sat in the seat behind the quad mounted barrels in a go order. As soon as the trigger buttons were depressed by the gunners thumbs the quad mounted anti-aircraft battery came to life spurting out hundreds of rounds per minute from its belt fed ammunition at the rapidly closing and yet still distant raiders and heavy raiders. The vibrations of the guns send clouds of ash into the air and shook the men where they stood readying the next belts of ammunition and checking the coolant levels. More than a mile and a half away which was the furthest the explosive shells could go, golden black clouds of shrapnel burst to life adding their fury to the onrushing Raiders.

It was commonly known that in the hours leading up to the initial bombardment of Leonis hundreds of anti-air and missile batteries had been set up across Luminaire as they had been set up across every other town and city on Leonis to reduce the amount of missiles which would hit the cities. They only had hours to prepare back then and since the majority of the troops were needed to safely evacuate as many civilians as possible they didn't have the time or the manpower to set up a larger defence.

This time was different. True just as many troops as had been involved in the evacuations, more even, had their time taken up conducting search and rescue operations and setting up the assets, locations and traps they would need. But this time they were able to call upon the reservists, those on leave and the former military whom had volunteered their expertise and were called back into service. They also had a lot more time to set up more batteries than in the initial bombardment, thousands more. In Luminaire alone there were more than 6000 batteries set up on and in buildings, in streets and at the entrances to numerous subway tunnels. Each one was manned by a team of four men and women and each one was just as ferocious as the next.

The heavens seemed to come alive as those that were in range of the Cylon Raiders and Heavy Raiders opened up on them forcing these enemy ships from the skies in fantastic gouts of fire to either explode where they flew or crash to the ground. Some Raiders which managed to avoid the explosive shells and were able to close to missile range let loose with whatever missiles they had left and attempted to close even further to the manned positions before they too were torn asunder or were forced into a retreat. Their missiles carried on towards the manned positions, however the majority were crushed by the rapidly fired ammunition of the batteries, their electronics scrambled by the electronic warfare apparatus built into a fifth of the batteries which extended 500 feet (could be up to a kilometre if power restrictions weren't in place) or were in a handful of cases able to successfully take out the gunnery positions. Either way it was plainly obvious that the Leonosians were successfully winning this round.

**Luminaire**

**Linthorpe**

**Major Natalie Ford**

Crawling out from under the desk which had threatened to snap under the blows of the ceiling tiles and masonry which had crashed against it, Major Ford was careful not to cut her protected hands on the broken glass and the jagged metal which littered the floor. Her ears rang from the explosions of the Parking Wardens but the ringing was thankfully dying down now. Looking around herself, she struggled to make out anything further than a few metres in the thick dust which obscured the room. She called out "Sam, Pauli, Jammer, sitrep". A moment passed before she heard over the subdued ringing each one answering back that they were good. Checking the Geiger counter on her watch and seeing that the radiation levels weren't as high as she expected and then double her radiation disk which had barely changed over the past hour, Natalie thought that Command must have developed a way to reduce the amount of radiation their nukes released or had chosen to go with a much smaller nuke not realising that they had done both. The demolition teams and the command staff which had developed Raging Thunder had carefully calculated the safe distances for each site based on a variety of factors including wind speed and direction and the age of the buildings (buildings built within the past forty years had a far stricter building code than pre-war buildings and were required to withstand at least a moderate earthquake). But still it was hard to believe that their calculations had been so perfect.

Going back to the window and seeing that the blinds were no longer there, Natalie could barely make out anything in the streets. Quickly clearing the desk of debris, Natalie laid her sniper rifle down on it before pulling her electro-binoculars from a pouch and selecting an infrared filter before she again looked out of the window. In the distance she could make out the heat blooms and the weirdest shaped mushroom cloud that she had ever seen (not realising that it was actually nine mushroom clouds which were blending into the one and had been warped by the dome shaped chambers each nuke was kept in which thanks to the armour involved had over pressurised the nuclear blasts into an upwards direction). Zooming in she could just barely make out a few Centurions which had been just outside of the nukes radius struggling to stand. Then she saw flickering blossoms in the air at the edge of the electro-binoculars field of view. Shifting focus she made out the thousands of anti-aircraft rounds attacking the remaining Cylon Raiders and Heavy Raiders.

"Natalie, more Centurions which were at the edge of the nukes radius are getting up. There must be a few hundred at least, maybe even a thousand that we can't see" Pauli spoke into his throat mic as he too surveyed the devastation.

Colonel Bligh must also have been aware of the amount of Cylons still active as his crackly voice thanks to the EM interference came over the wireless "All ground units, Bligh. We have Cylon Centurions still on the ground. You are weapons free, choose your targets carefully and take out as many toasters from a distance as you can. Bligh out".

"You heard the man. Pick your targets and fire when ready" Natalie ordered as she stowed her binoculars and picked up the sniper rifle before setting it up. Changing the filter on the scope to a powered infrared filter (this filter was also interchangeable with the scope on her assault rifle), Natalie laid down on the desk and took up a firing position, carefully adjusting the scope.

"Pauli was right, the Cylons deployed by the Heavy Raiders must have been just out of range of the nukes" Sam informed her as he made out what must have been a hundred Centurions forming up and marching down the street in scattered ranks. Out of the entire squad Pauli was the best sniper however at the moment with so many Cylons down range of the Century deployed in the surrounding buildings and given how fast the Centurions were able to move in their assaults on the fleet Battlestars, the various squads were having to temporarily do away with their spotting techniques in order to have overwhelming firepower. However the handful of squads which were specialised sniping squads and so were faster than their counterparts and were able to continue using their spotter techniques. The truth was that the majority of the legions squads were trained for all round performance with only a handful of squads per century being specialised as snipers or demolition teams.

Peering through the scope Natalie was able to make out the distant shapes of the Cylons. Centring on chest of the nearest one gave a range of 1818.55 metres. Raising the angle of the rifle so as to allow for the distance and windspeed (which was shown at the edge of the lens and was 94% accurate) so that it looked like the shot would miss in the scope, Natalie fired just as she was letting out a breath, and was pleased to note that the armour piercing explosive round hit the Cylon just to the upper left of its centre mass causing that part of the Centurion to explode and throwing it to the ground. Changing her aim to the next, Natalie noted that this one's head exploded as another Legionary took it out forcing Natalie to yet again change her aim before she could take out another attacking centurion. As soon as the first Centurions came under fire the rest quickly moved to opposite sides of the street and started sprinting down the road rapidly covering the distance to the defending Legionaries and making Natalie's job just that much harder. Still she continued to carefully choose her targets and take them down as did every other Legionary with a sniper rifle.

Changing her clip as the Cylons closed to 600 metres, and it became clear that at least 500 Centurions remained, Natalie called out "Sam, get the machine guns set up", she was referring to the heavy weapons which Pauli and Jammer had packed on the Raven. She heard him shuffle about to her left as he moved over to where Pauli was set up and heft the two heavy bags which held the weapons before he moved behind her and to her right, placed the bags on the floor and dragged two desks over to two windows before he started setting up each gun.

**Luminaire**

**Linthorpe**

**8****th**** Avenue**

"Toasters are 200 feet away. Remember wait until the first ranks pass" Sergeant James Elmos ordered his men as they waited inside the first floor of a brick house 200 metres down the road from Major Ford. There were two machine guns set up in both of the front facing bedrooms while downstairs another squad under the command of Sergeant Damien Long was covering both the front and rear entrances. Standing next to the shattered window with his back against the wall, he peered out watching the Centurions on the opposite side of the road as they sprinted onwards coming under fire now from the machine guns which the rear squads like Major Fords had set up. In the distance on the nearby parallel roads he could make out the other centuries taking on their own Cylons.

The first toasters passed by their position and it was a further thirty seconds before he felt like enough Cylons were together now to even risk revealing their position. Evidently those squads positioned over the road felt the same as they opened fire on those Centurions under his windows at the same time as he gave the order to fire. The staccato continues rhythm of the Machine Guns split the air as they spat out round after round into the dozens of Toasters passing into their kill spots before Elmos started firing out with his own assault rifle splitting the heads of two Centurions which had been too close together. One went down firing its arm mounted guns taking out or damaging a further three more Cylons before it went quiet. The Cylons were quick to react though as they sent Centurions of their own to storm the attacking houses.

As he continued to fire a heavy blast cleared the front steps as a Claymore mine which had only been set up minutes before went off destroying and damaging the Cylons that had dared risk entering their buildings. Then the cracking blasts of the downstairs machine guns came into the mix as the Cylons reached the doorway.

Those Cylons on the opposite side of the street opened fire on the upstairs windows of the house, the rounds flashing through the windowless openings to slam into the plaster of the opposite walls which burst into hundreds of clouds of dust. Of those that missed even getting through the opening you could actually feel the rapid thunk, thunk, thunks of them slamming into the solid brick walls next to the windows. Popping the clip out from his assault rifle and slamming in a second one before he chambered a round, he was just turning to fire out of the window again when in a flash Private Merdrin's head burs open under the titanic pressure of a Cylons round, the blood stretching out on the ceiling behind him. There was no way he survived, Elmos knew that but he hesitated at seeing the 19 year old legionary collapsed on the floor, the machine gun draped over the body.

In that moment of hesitation the Centurions rounds tore through the brick wall behind him and the rounds hammered into his armour plating. Each one fired in quick succession broke down the meagre defences which the armour offered, forcing Elmos off his feet. As he fell one last succession of rounds tore through the space between his body and neck where his armour was at its weakest, the rounds tearing through his spinal column and out of his neck in a bloody explosion. He was dead before he ever hit the ground.

**Childs Bedroom**

**Corporal Taggart**

His body reverberating under the rapid, successive recoil of the machine gun, Taggart kept his head as low as he could without burning himself on the rising mound of shell casings which were threatening to burn his face so as to not be shot by the hundreds of rounds bursting through the window. He had no way to know if he was killing any Cylons outside but he had to at least be hitting something.

"Merdrin's went quiet" Private Gastogne shouted over to him from his position next to the window as he noticed that there was no machine gun fire or fire whatsoever coming from the next window "Same with Elmos".

Continuing to fire, it wasn't long before his gun ran dry and he was forced to go through the horrible task of opening the heated chamber, feeding in a belt of rounds he pulled from the metal tin at his side before closing the chamber and resetting the gun ready to fire and then he noticed the smoke rising from the scolding barrel. Reaching towards his bag he pulled his canteen from his backpack and poured the water over the barrel causing a rapid cloud of steam to form as the barrel was forced to release its pent up heat.

Without warning the floor of the room rocked under a massive explosion from below them before Phillips came on the wireless "Elmos, we can't hold them any longer. Pull out now".

Activating his throat mic while pulling his backpack on and crouching, he wrapped the belt of rounds loosely around his left forearm while saying "Phillips, Taggart. Elmos has gone quiet. We're checking on him now before we ready the escape".

"Roger that, be advised we can only buy you 2 minutes at most".

Going into the master bedroom, Taggart saw the horror of his two buddies lifeless corpses and despite seeing so many dead in the past three days this was more horrific in how they were personal to him. Gastogne on the other hand was so shocked that he was like a lifeless statue. Seeing him like this snapped Taggart out of his reverie and forced him to slap Gastogne's cheek "Fraking snap out of it and double check the charge". Gastogne barely responded before he walked back out to the hallway.

Moving over to the headless body of Private Merdrin, Taggart looked at him for a moment before resting his machine gun on the floor and rifling through Merdrins pouches pulling out his letters to his loved ones along with photos, ammunition which he placed into a popup satchel along with basic medical supplies, his sidearm, map (none of the ARCs, safehouses or bases were on this map, it was mainly a military street map of the city) and basic rations. He then took one of the soldier's tags before pacing a brick of C8 on his chest. Moving onto Sergeant Elmos, he did the same here and after picking up both of their backpacks he called back Gastogne and handed him one of the backpacks telling him "We can't strip the packs here. Is the charge set?"

Struggling momentarily under the weight of the back and surprised that Taggart was able to not just carry his own and this second backpack with ease but also pick up the machine gun one handed, Gastogne answered "Its set".

Speaking into his throat mic over the chaotic battle going on downstairs and the handful of bullets which were starting to burst through the floor, Taggart shouted "Long, charge is set. We're pulling out in 10 seconds".

Over the solid thunks of rounds and the heavy crashing of Cylon carapaces, Sergeant Long shouted up the stairs, "Roger that. Everyone pull out".

Counting down from ten, Gastogne depressed the trigger on the detonator when Taggart ordered it, the explosion more of a muffled bang which shook the house than anything else. A cloud of dust like the densest fog flooded the room from the hallway before Taggart strode out and inspected their exit.

Small breaching charges had been drilled into the supporting wall separating the two houses as soon as the two teams had arrived and while it was dangerous blowing a hole through a supporting wall, it was felt that this might be necessary if they were surrounded and they only used enough placed in the right spots to do so. Bricks fell along with floorboards as he approached the wall before the dust barely cleared enough for Taggart to see that the wall had been successfully breached. Ducking through the hole and checking the room for Cylons, Taggart called Gastogne through and then ordered Gastogne to detonate the next set. Changing to the assigned frequency on the detonator, the next wall detonated safely and they continued through to the third and last house of the block before Sergeant Long and his two surviving squad mates caught up with them.

As soon as they had arrived, Long detonated the third frequency. The entire building shook as if a giant had slammed his fist down upon it but it was in fact the original house they had been in detonating and the bodies of Elmos and Merdrin moving onto Elysium under the power of the C8 bricks which had lain upon them.

**Leonis Orbit**

**Cylon Fleet**

**Cylon Command Basestar**

In a move that spoke of the desperation that they were now in, a three came forward and in her sultry accent which now flared with rage announced "We need to pull back those unaffected transports to the outskirts of each city…"

"They're there now, and they haven't been hit. If they stay where they are we can create bases of operations within their city limits and destroy them from the inside" a four broke in, he really believed in this plan. Yes they had been hit, and hit hard but he believed that they could and should stay the course, if they did then they could turn the tide of this fiasco.

"Are you really that stupid?" a Six replied "they have more anti-aircraft fire than they did when we first bombarded them, they have men in position at all our avenues of ingress. Don't believe me? Look at Linthorpe in Luminaire or Badon Hill in Pollonus. We have no air cover, we can't land reinforcements close enough to where they are needed and the Centurions on the ground are being wiped out. If we want to take each of these cities then we need to rethink our strategy. Three is right. I move to make her leader of all of our forces on Leonis".

A two answered "I agree" before an Eight followed suit and then a five and a one until the Four was forced to admit that maybe Three was right.

Three stepped forward and announced "We pull each transport still on the ground back three miles from each cities limits and setup our bases of operations there, same with all the supporting vessels. The Centurions on the ground within the Cities need to go into retreat and secure a more confined area around where there former landing grounds were and are to dig in for a protracted fight. The truth is they have all lost, they cannot win and will eventually be resurrected but they can take out a lot more Legionaries and bog down the Leonosians efforts the longer they can hold those areas which will make our next invasions of those cities easier.

"Those transports arriving in orbit are to further secure the new landing grounds and the bases we will be setting up. Then we take the cities block by block until we eventually secure them all. We cannot win this fight overnight, this requires a protracted effort which will need a lot more resources than we had planned but the facts show that it is the only way apart from constant bombardment of the cities and might I remind you just how well we did last time and this time they are even more prepared. We also need to start proper war production. I'm talking about handheld weapons here not just the inbuilt blasters and we cannot, I repeat, cannot underestimate Field Marshall Montgomery. He has just proven exactly how far he will go to secure his Homeworld" The four summed up.

The others were quiet for a while before One said "It looks like you are right. Give the orders Louise".

Louise Macedon got to work issuing the necessary orders.

**Leonis**

**Luminaire**

**ARC-16**

More than half an hour had passed since the Cylons had begun their assault on his Homeworld and he had been forced to retaliate when the thankful news came in "Sir, the Cylons are pulling back".

Turning to look at his chief tactical officer, Montgomery asked "Where?"

"All over the planet, sir. The surviving transports at the QT2 (Queen Tamara 2nd spaceport whose nuclear charges had failed to detonate) are moving north by north west past the city limits (QT2 was located at the edge of the city anyway) and their heavy raiders are moving to secure an area 3 miles outside the City limits. The surviving Cylon transports in the other affected cities are doing likewise".

Colonel Ibis another tactical officer whom was covering the ground effort announced "The Centurions are also pulling back. Those in Silverwood are digging in around their former landing grounds…"

Montgomery saw the meaning and announced "Then they mean to keep our forces occupied for the next few weeks while they hit us from their new bases", looking at General Marx, Montgomery announced "Let's not give them that satisfaction. Marx, prepare a gunship assault on those positions".

"What about the new landing grounds?" Marx asked.

Montgomery smiled "Why would I kick them out of the places I want them. If we do then they will be forced to bombard us again. Plus any assault we attempt will be under the guns of the Cylons Raiders. No, we leave them for now but have artillery moved towards the bordering streets".

Nodding, General Marx went about issuing orders.

**Luminaire**

**Linthorpe**

**Major Natalie Ford**

Shaking under the constant pneumatic drill-like vibrations of the machine gun, Natalie kept on gunning down as many toasters as she could. The Cylons had been stalled just a hundred feet from her position and were taking cover behind what cars they could. She knew that the Cylons had managed to make it slightly further up a parallel road before being stalled but the very fact that they had managed to stall them was one of the best signs possible that they were winning. The best sign however came as those Cylons at the rear of the scattered formation went into retreat back to the destroyed landing grounds leaving fifty centurions to cover their retreat.

Over the whoops of joy of Jammer feeding a new belt of ammunition into the other machine gun, Natalie continued to gun down those Centurions left behind. Soon all that was left as the dust settled were the mangled remains of hundreds of Centurions and a half dozen collapsed buildings. She was momentarily grateful that she couldn't see her fellow legionaries whom had been lost.

The voice of Colonel Bligh came over the wireless "First and Fourth Centuries, Bligh. Get to the Ravens. All other centuries are to hold position. Good work, we might just win this yet".

"Leave the ordnance and get moving" Natalie ordered her squad before they took off towards the stairwell meeting up with a dishevelled looking Captain Simon Harris and one member of his squad. As they moved down the stairs, Natalie huffed "Where's Blake and Harrow?"

Rounding a landing before continuing down, Simon replied "Blake took a round in his chest. A through and through but we think it went through his right lung. Harrow's treating him right now and waiting for a medevac".

As they neared the ground floor, a lot more vigilantly now than they had been, they were forced to pull their neckerchiefs over their mouths to block out the thick cloud of dust which was blocking the foyer. Opening the door, Natalie quickly glanced down both sides of the street seeing the destruction clearly evident from the drawn out battle before being reasonably assured that it was clear. Spotting a Sniper in a third floor window over the road give the all clear, Natalie and the squad and a half behind her raced over the road at a crouch and into the alley where they had first landed.

The Ravens were now uncovered and Natalie made out four crammed into this alley all being boarded by a handful of squads from her century. Boarding her own, she pulled each member of the squads up behind her before she slid the hatch backwards into the closed position. Pulling two levers on the top and bottom of her hatch she then slid the hatch backwards into its next locking position while the engines started up. Doing this allowed the chain gun which had been compacted in an upright position in the front starboard side of the cabin to deploy out of the now open hatch.

The Raven took off rising between the buildings as she set up the chain gun on her side and Simon set up the opposite one, meanwhile Sam and Pauli went forward to help with the rear gun targeting computers while the remaining two legionaries stood ready in case their help was needed.

Once the Raven was in the air and had joined up with nineteen other Ravens from differing cohorts and centuries they all accelerated forwards and to the outskirts of the now desolate and destroyed Rose Hall Parade Grounds in order to destroy every Cylon which was taking cover there.

The jets buffeted the clouds of dust and smoke which had been dispersing and the Raven was rocked from side to side as it passed through hotter and cooler areas. It was…strange to Major Ford to see the results of the deadly battle from this elevated position. While the only missiles fired had been the Cylons own ones mainly at the four block thick area surrounding the landing grounds there were hundreds of craters in a vast area surrounding the former Parade Grounds. Roofs had been caved in, potholes that even a tank would struggle to get through were all that was left of some of the roads and within a 1 mile radius of the parade grounds all that remained of the house, apartments and shops were flattened piles of rubble as if they were wooden buildings which had faced the very worst tornados. And then there were the Cylons.

Many Cylons were still struggling to return to the areas they had been ordered to hold and it became clear to Natalie at least that no more than a couple of hundred could have survived. Aiming her mounted chain gun at the closest Cylon, Natalie depressed the triggers (one for the rotary mechanism combined with the coolant and the other for the actual firing). A slot opened up at the base of the chain gun to accept the spent shell casings and store them unless the co-pilot ordered them to be ejected from the Raven. Powerful stabilisers took effect as the rounds left the rapidly rotating barrels and tore towards the Cylons in her path and then the already desolate road exploded as these high explosive rounds tore into it and then the Centurions. Behind her Simon repeated her actions just as every other airborne Raven was doing.

Some Centurions realising that they wouldn't make it to their assigned areas turned to engage the airborne multi-purpose gunships but their rounds were unable to breach the armoured undersides of the deadly Ravens, Still they continued to fire at their pursuers until they were taken care of with the highly volatile, explosive rounds. A couple of gunships took fire at their VTOL jets and suffered some degrees of damage which forced them to break off their pursuit and land so as to avoid crashing but as soon as this happened twice, the remaining Ravens simply increased their height.

Within twenty minutes of bombardment to the point that the Ravens were running out of ammunition the last of the active Cylons went down and the order to return to base was called since these pilots and legionaries had been closer to the radiation surrounding Rose Hall and so needed to be checked out at the hospital before they could be cleared for combat.

Returning to ARC-16 at a more sedate pace, the Raven circled Dragonville industrial estate before it was cleared to land in a carpark near to a lightly damaged warehouse. The wheels were deployed and the Raven gently touched down before a group of auxiliaries and Legionaries opened the doors to the warehouse and rushed out along with a handful of vehicles so that they could bring the Ravens into the disguised hanger.

**ARC-16**

**Pilgrims Hospital, 6 Hours later**

Queen Alexandria, a chief doctor by training in her early years as a princess stood over the female officer in front of her looking over her chart. The officer, Major Ford had passed out as soon as she had lain on the bed when she came into the hospital more than five hours ago, she hadn't slept more than a few hours over the past three days and this lack of sleep had finally caught up with her. A drip had been set up which was steadily releasing a strong course of anti-radiation medication into her bloodstream and her results looked like she would be combat ready within a couple of days.

So many wounded Legionaries had come in that the medical staff were momentarily overwhelmed until they had performed triage and realised that the majority could be treated by corpsmen, but still more than a thousand Legionaries and auxiliaries had came in wounded to some degree and it was known that on average each legion had lost about 100 men and women each.

As she moved to wipe a spot of dirt off Natalie's forehead, Natalie smiled at the touch and then opened her eyes. There was a look of momentary puzzlement on her face as she thought she recognised the woman treating her and then this puzzlement passed into shock as she realised just who it was and she blurted out "My Queen…I'm…"

"Hush. You're okay, well you will be in a couple of days. You took a large dose of radiation which we are clearing up right now, thankfully the radiation hasn't affected any of your internal organs and your electrolyte levels were right down. You need to rest, we need alert soldiers".

Natalie was struggling to remember what had happened and hadn't heard any news of the other landing sites so asked "Your majes…"

The Queen smiled and interrupted "Call me Alex".

"I couldn't be so informal, your majesty".

"Okay, then Doctor".

Smiling at Alexandria's smile, Natalie replied "Very well, Doctor. Can you tell me what happened at the other landing sites?"

"Men and women like you drove the Cylons back from every one of them after Monty destroyed the majority of their landing craft. Right now the Cylons have set up bases outside of the City limits which is what Monty was aiming for. We won. Now do you want something to eat or drink?" Alex asked her patient.

Feeling the hunger pangs descend on her, Natalie replied "Both please, your Ma…Doctor. Although I do feel like I should be the one getting you the food".

Turning to leave, Alexandria said "You've already done your duty today. Now it's my turn to mine" before she left with one of her ever present and ever vigilant guards taking up position behind her. Queen Alexandria could never know just how much her reassuring presence meant to Major Natalie Ford.

Turning her head as she rested it back on the soft waterproof (with a pillowcase) pillow, Natalie saw the dozens of Legionaries and Auxiliaries laying in their own beds or sat by the side of their comrades and what was worse was the man who lay in the next bed being treated by a female intern no older than twenty. The entire left hand side of his face was blotchy, seeping and bleeding with radiation burns which the intern was tending to with an anti-radiation cream. Facing the ceiling and closing her eyes, a tear crept down Natalie's cheek as she remembered all the corpses that she had cremated, swearing to herself that she would make every Cylon pay that she could.

**ARC-16**

**Alpha Command Staff Quarters**

**Field Marshall Montgomery's Quarters**

You might think that the head of all Leonis armed forces would have one of the grandest quarters in the whole ARC and in a way you might be right. Field Marshall Montgomery did have an entire room to himself, it was however a room which measured 8 foot by 10 foot, barely bigger than a broom closet really. The hatch slid open on runners and could be locked in place, to the right when you entered was his closet and to the left of that was a combined bunk bed and desk (bed on the top and a workstation below it holding a computer, books and mementos). In front of the desk part was Montgomery's main comfort, a reclining padded black leather office chair which could just barely recline in the cramped quarters and to the left of that facing those who entered was a book shelf holding over a hundred books (mainly crime thrillers, histories of wars, survival books and psychological textbooks). To the left when you entered was a wall of framed photos of family, his second family in the military, Leonis before the fall, and his family crest (a Lion on the left and Lioness on the right guarding three cubs in the centre under the Constellation of Leo. Below it was his family motto in ancient Kobolian; Strength through Honour, Honour through Family).

Finishing off reading and signing off on the reports which had mounted up over the past three days, Montgomery drank from his goblet of wine before standing and rubbing at the tight knot which had developed in the back of his neck before he scanned through his bookshelf and pulled out Cyrus Roselyn's first volume of the history of the first Cylon war before he sat back down and got to reading. Roselyn's books on the Cylon war were perhaps the most comprehensive books on the subject and covered what he saw as the development of the Cylons psychology before the war even started. This was of course compiled after the first war had been complete but it was believed by Roselyn at least that the major problem was that of religion and the Cylon adoption of the monotheistic beliefs spread by the Soldiers of the One under the tutelage of a Sister Clarice Willow. Clarice was known as a terrorist who had been behind the STOs attempted bombing of Caprica City's Atlas Arena but had somehow escaped justice. Through eye witness accounts, Roselyn had learnt that Clarice had preached monotheism to the Cylons in V-world and had later fled to Gemenon when the GDD were closing in on her.

It was perhaps, Roselyn had surmised, Clarice's teachings which had led to the first Cylon war and the truly horrific violence which the Cylons had turned to. Montgomery took it all in, it always helped to know your enemy and he suspected if he knew them well enough then he might just be able to anticipate their next moves. Raging Thunder might have been the Leonosians first strike but it certainly wouldn't be their last. The Leonosians would fight for every inch of ground that they gave if they had to but eventually the Cylons would more than likely win out if only because they could manufacture their army and they had orbital supremacy. The Cylons would learn from their mistakes and would eventually get a foothold within the city and when they did the Leonosians would be in for the war to end all wars.

But it would not be today. It wasn't long before sleep caught up with Montgomery as he slumped in his chair.

**Well I hope you all liked this chapter and the first major ground offensive of the war. It may have become clear that Im definitely not in the army although I will strive to make this seem as realistic as possible. If you are wondering why the Cylons wouldn't have seen the Legions from space then please remember what Caprica looked like in the weeks following its bombing, dust clouds would block almost everything.**

**The Cylons original plan for the invasion had been setting up fobs in each city and then sending out their Centurions to secure each area but now thanks to Raging Thunder destroying their landing grounds they have been forced to create their bases outside each cities limits.**

**The Raven will be the UH-1 of this war and is based on the aircraft that the Cylons under Daniel Graystones command used in Capricas last episode Apotheosis at the Atlas stadium. The Raven is a multi-purpose transport able to hold a maximum of four squads (16 men plus pilot and co-pilot) and has side mounted chainguns, a rear chaingun, a gun similar to those found on a Viper below the nose and can be equipped with four missiles on each shaft leading to the VTOL jets on the sides. Raptors, while good don't look like they have been designed for a ground war.**

**I should also point out that Colonial Battery technology is a lot better than ours (based off of Caprica tech).**

**All reviews are appreciated and feel free to ask any questions.**


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